Offering material incentives for sacred-value compromises backfires and increases hostility

Evidence

These experiments built on earlier research into sacred or protected values, by demonstrating that claims to sacred values were more than posturing. Although a large body of work into judgment and decision-making has demonstrated the ways in which normative rules of rationality are systematically violated when people make decisions aimed at achieving instrumental outcomes such as maximizing profit (Axelrod, 1984; Kahneman & Miller, 1986; Ostrom, 1998), our results showed that people with sacred values did not reason instrumentally. We were able to show that people with sacred values responded with greater hostility to compromises over those sacred values when such compromises included material sweeteners to the deal. In contrast, they responded with decreased hostility when the other side made symbolic gestures. We believed that these results have significant implications for understanding the trajectory of many cultural, resource, and political conflicts, implying that attempts to solve disputes in a bargaining setting by focusing on increasing the costs or benefits of different actions can backfire, if people conceived of the issue as sacred. — Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict, 67

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core backfire claim central to the reader’s research agenda; connects to sacred values work by Tetlock and to research on the backfire effect in motivated reasoning. — connects to: Sacralized values resist material incentives and cause offer-driven concessions to backfire — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 5; Sacred values are measured by refusal to trade a preference for money — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 24; Ritual participation plus perceived threat converts disputed preferences into sacred values. — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 58 (+18 more)
• SEED: Directly serves the reader’s stated goal — evidence that rational/material correction hardens threat-hardened commitment rather than softening it.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the backfire specifically require sacred framing, or does it also occur over identity-salient but non-sacred strong preferences?

Related

• Material incentives for relinquishing sacred values backfire and harden resistance (similarity 0.95)
• Sacralized values resist material incentives and cause offer-driven concessions to backfire (similarity 0.94)
• Material offers to resolve sacred-value conflicts backfire and increase violence, while symbolic concessions work. (similarity 0.90)
• Defending sacred values defies material cost-benefit prediction across decision contexts. (similarity 0.88)
• Symbolic recognition, not material incentives, opens negotiations over sacred values (similarity 0.87)
• Sacred values resist tradeoffs because communities set them apart as nonfungible moral imperatives. (similarity 0.85)
• Sacred values resist material incentives and are best countered only by rival sacred values. (similarity 0.85)
• Sacred values are measured by refusal to trade a preference for money (similarity 0.84)
• Material incentives harden sacred-value conflicts while symbolic gestures soften them (similarity 0.83)
• Sacred values resist cost-benefit correction unlike ordinary preferences (similarity 0.83)
• Sacred-value defenders benefit materially yet must deny those benefits to stay non-negotiable (similarity 0.83)
• Sacred values engage deontic rule processing, not utilitarian cost-benefit calculation (similarity 0.82)
• Sacred values and resource scarcity create an irreconcilable tension in social life. (similarity 0.82)
• Reducing sacred values to material ones worsens conflict (similarity 0.81)
• Ritual participation plus perceived threat converts disputed preferences into sacred values. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Material offers to resolve sacred-value conflicts backfire and increase violence, while symbolic concessions work. #corroborates (0.98) — Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict, 143
• Material incentives backfire on sacred values while symbolic recognition softens opposition. #corroborates (0.95) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 547
• Material incentives harden sacred-value conflicts while symbolic gestures soften them #corroborates (0.93)
• Reducing sacred values to material ones worsens conflict #corroborates (0.85)
• Sacred values resist cost-benefit correction unlike ordinary preferences #expands (0.80) — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor, 4
• Genuine moral commitments resist monetary incentives to switch #expands (0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 303
• Sacred values resist trade-offs and override rational self-interest in decision making. #expands (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 545
• Merely contemplating trade-offs on sacred values provokes moral outrage beyond cognitive confusion #expands (0.78) — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 12
• Defending sacred values defies material cost-benefit prediction across decision contexts. #expands (0.78) — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor, 22