Elites can sway people by reframing sacred values as secular tradeoffs.

Evidence

Tetlock (2003) argued that sacred values are “pseudo sacred.” He began with the following premise: while people are generally sincere when they claim a value to be sacred, such sacredness is impossible. In a real world of scarce resources, he argued, we have to put a material price on everything. Tetlock (2003) portrays people as taking a delicate tightrope walk, attempting to adhere to sacred values associated with their social identities in a way that still satisfies their need to interact with the finite material world around them. He argues that to manage this clash, people are easily swayed by attempts of elites to reframe sacred values as secular, or taboo tradeoffs (between a sacred value and a material one) as tragic tradeoffs, (between sacred values). — Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict, 20

Categorization

• XREF: The elite reframing thesis directly engages the reader’s question of whether threat-hardened sacred convictions can be rationally corrected — Tetlock says yes, Ginges counters below. — connects to: Religiosity predicts sacred values independent of demographics and politics. — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 26; Religious ritual converts secular values into sacred ones that harden conflict; Sacred values resist trade-offs and override rational self-interest in decision making. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 545 (+8 more)

Related

• Sacred values and resource scarcity create an irreconcilable tension in social life. (similarity 0.84)
• Sacred values resist tradeoffs because communities set them apart as nonfungible moral imperatives. (similarity 0.83)
• Sacred values resist material incentives and are best countered only by rival sacred values. (similarity 0.82)
• Sacredness is a functional universal that anchors compliance and resists secular contamination. (similarity 0.81)
• Ritual participation plus perceived threat converts disputed preferences into sacred values. (similarity 0.81)
• External threat drives groups to ritualize preferences into sacred values (similarity 0.80)
• Sacralized values resist material incentives and cause offer-driven concessions to backfire (similarity 0.80)
• Participation in religious ritual and perceived group threat jointly make people sacralize preferences. (similarity 0.79)
• Sacred values can form quickly through ritual and perceived group threat. (similarity 0.79)
• Sacred values’ interpretive ambiguity allows peace-oriented reframing (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Sacred values resist trade-offs and override rational self-interest in decision making. #expands (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 545
• Religious ritual converts secular values into sacred ones that harden conflict #complicates (0.72)
• External threat drives groups to ritualize preferences into sacred values #qualifies (0.72) — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 14
• Elites deliberately mobilize prejudice to enforce majority social order and transform people’s worth. #expands (0.72) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 463
• Religion can override political rights and material gains when believers hold it inviolable #complicates (0.72)
• Material incentives backfire on sacred values while symbolic recognition softens opposition. #contradicts (0.70) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 547