Merely contemplating trade-offs on sacred values provokes moral outrage beyond cognitive confusion

Evidence

The model also predicts derogation as a function of mere contemplation. Traditional cognitive accounts trace the difficulty people have been making trade-offs between secular values such as money and convenience and sacred values, such as love and loyalty, to the incommensurability problem – the absence of a common metric for comparing secular and sacred values . The SVPM insists, however, that people find such trade-offs not only cognitively confusing but morally disturbing and traces this reaction to a deeper or constitutive form of incommensurability. Our commitments to other people require us to deny that certain things are comparable. Even to contemplate attaching a finite monetary value to one’s friendships, children, or loyalty to one’s country is to disqualify oneself from membership in the associated moral community. — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 12

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is exactly the mechanism underlying taboo cognition the reader flagged — but does contemplation alone (without any act) also trigger observed behavioral sanction, and how far does the backfire generalize across cultures?
• XREF: connects to: Sacred values resist tradeoffs because communities set them apart as nonfungible moral imperatives. — Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict, 4; Offering material incentives for sacred-value compromises backfires and increases hostility — Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict, 67; Sacred values resist material incentives and are best countered only by rival sacred values. — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor: Unconditional…, 82 (+6 more)

Related

• Mere contemplation of sacred trade-offs produces opposite moral reactions for taboo versus tragic cases (similarity 0.87)
• Merely lingering over a taboo trade-off provokes moral outrage independent of the choice made. (similarity 0.86)
• Philip E. Tetlock — Thinking the unthinkable sacred values and taboo cognitions (similarity 0.81)
• Sacred values resist tradeoffs because communities set them apart as nonfungible moral imperatives. (similarity 0.80)
• People avoid confronting sacred-secular contradictions until forced, then embrace rhetorical redefinitions. (similarity 0.79)
• Sacred values resist cost-benefit correction unlike ordinary preferences (similarity 0.79)
• Masking sacred-value trade-offs in moral rhetoric sharply raises acceptance of them. (similarity 0.79)
• Sacred values engage deontic rule processing, not utilitarian cost-benefit calculation (similarity 0.79)
• Sacred values and resource scarcity create an irreconcilable tension in social life. (similarity 0.79)
• People behave as intuitive theologians defending sacred values, not just as economists or scientists. (similarity 0.78)
• Uncommitted taboo thoughts can contaminate and trigger symbolic moral cleansing (similarity 0.78)
• Sacred values are measured by refusal to trade a preference for money (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Merely lingering over a taboo trade-off provokes moral outrage independent of the choice made. #corroborates (0.95) — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 25
• Mere contemplation of sacred trade-offs produces opposite moral reactions for taboo versus tragic cases #expands (0.85) — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 24
• Sacred values resist trade-offs and override rational self-interest in decision making. #qualifies (0.78) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 545