Cognitive Properties of Sacred Values

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Cognitive Properties of Sacred Values

• With
• Dan Bartels
• Rumen Iliev
• Sonya Sachdeva
• Scott Atran
• Jeremy Ginges

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Sacred Values

1. Resist tradeoffsespecially between the sacred
   and the secular
2. Quantity Insensitivity---e.g. harming one is no
   less wrong than harming five
3. Deontological rather than consequentialist
   decision rules (e.g. do no harm, do it because
   its the right thing to do regardless of the
   consequences).

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Protected values and Omission bias(Ritov
Baron, 1999)

• A vaccination program will prevent 1000 children
  from dying from an epidemic of new infectious
  diseases. The vaccine itself will kill 100
  children because it sometimes causes the same
  diseases.
• Would you initiate the program? Y N
• What is the largest number of children killed by
  the vaccine at which you would initiate the
  program?__________
• People with PVs show omission bias, less quantity
  sensitivity
• Taken as supportive evidence that PVs arise from
  deontological rules concerning actions
• (But not the consequences of those actions)

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Study 1Quantity sensitivity

• Comparison of Baron and Ritovs methods with
  those modeled after Connolly and Reb (2003)
• Looked at both specific PVs and a tendency to
  have a lot of PVs (domain general).

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Study 1 CR Version

• A convoy of food trucks is on its way to a
  refugee camp during a famine in Africa.
  (Airplanes cannot be used.) You find that a
  second camp has even more refugees. If you tell
  the convoy to go to the second camp instead of
  the first, you will save 1000 people from death,
  but many people in the first camp will die as a
  result.
• Would you send the convoy to the second camp if
  100 refugees in the first camp would die as a
  result? Y N
• Would you send the convoy to the second camp if
  300 refugees in the first camp would die as a
  result? Y N
• Would you send the convoy to the second camp if
  500 refugees in the first camp would die as a
  result? Y N
• Would you send the convoy to the second camp if
  700 refugees in the first camp would die as a
  result? Y N
• Would you send the convoy to the second camp if
  900 refugees in the first camp would die as a
  result? Y N

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Study 1 Results

• Domain-Specific Analyses
• PVs ? Low QS in RB design
• PVs ? HIGH QS in CR design

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Study 1 Results

• Domain-General Analyses
• The more PVs endorsed, the less quantity
  sensitive s/he appeared in RB (r -.402)
• The more PVs endorsed, the more quantity
  sensitive s/he appeared in CR (r .342)

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Followup

• Is it any less wrong to do x than to do 5x?
• Is it any more wrong to do 5x and to do x?
• (including data from Palestinians)

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Summary

• People with PVs dont necessarily appear to be
  less sensitive to quantityin fact they may be
  more quantity sensitive to quantity, depending on
  the assessment method

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Deontological versus Consequentialist Orientations

• Typically measured in a way that makes them
  mutually exclusive
• Previous results Sacred values are associated
  with the absence of framing effects (Tanner and
  Medin, 2004)

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New Data

• Factor analysis Data from Switzerland and
  Germany suggest that they are at least partially
  independent and may be orthogonal
• Preliminary results largest framing for High
  Cons-High Deon

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Summary and Challenge

• Two keys properties of SVs, use of deontological
  rules and insensitivity to quantity, are
  undermined by these studies
• We need to understand how people with sacred
  values can be both consequentialist and
  deontological and both quantity sensitive and
  quantity insensitive

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Other cognitive properties of SVs

1. Greater conjunction fallacy
2. Less effect of an irrelevant anchor
3. Larger Stroop effect for value-related words
4. Better incidental memory for value related words

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All three scenarios
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Multiple regression DV Combined abortion
fallacy IV PVa, Neutral fallacy Neutral fallacy
b.48 PVa b .19 PVaXNeutral b.20 plt.05
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Multiple regression DV Target (percents) IV
PVa, Anchor anchor b.30 PVaXAnchor b-.13
plt.05
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PV or importance

• In a replication of these findings we changed the
  one-sided PV question to a more symmetrical
  measurement of importance, where both pro-life
  and pro-choice people could express their
  attitude
• Using this measure, we basically replicated the
  findings