Positive incentive systems can be corrupted into subsidies for the very harm they target

Evidence

Intergroup conflicts become particularly difficult to solve when communities transform preferences (such as rights to water sources or land) into protected or sacred values (Baron & Spranca, 1997; Tetlock, 2003). Neuroimaging studies and behavioral research suggest that people process sacred values in terms of associated deontological rules rather than their utilitarian value (Berns et al., 2012; Ginges et al., 2011; Tetlock et al., 2000). Specifically, when people transform preferences into sacred values they appear to use rules that govern reasoning about religious values, regarding as taboo any attempt to treat sacred values as fungible with secular goods. Ironically, the more money or material things one offers to encourage people to make concessions over their sacred values, the more resistant people seem to be to compromise. Thus, standard negotiation techniques of offering people added material incentives (or threatening disincentives) to encourage compromise backfire when sacred values are involved (Ginges, Atran, Medin & Shikaki, 2007; Ginges & Atran, 2008; Ginges & Atran, 2009b; Ginges & Atran, 2011; Sachdeva & Medin, 2009; Dehghani et al., 2009; Dehghani et al., 2010). — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 5 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Redemption scams exploit tax code opacity and belief that others beat the system — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 645; Cost-benefit analysis causes the very distortions it claims to prevent — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 237; Short-term profit incentives override distant and slowly accumulating environmental harms (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Sacralized values resist material incentives and cause offer-driven concessions to backfire #complicates (0.71) — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 5