Philip E. Tetlock — Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values and taboo cognitions

15 published claims from this book.

• Masking sacred-value trade-offs in moral rhetoric sharply raises acceptance of them.
• Mere contemplation of sacred trade-offs produces opposite moral reactions for taboo versus tragic cases
• Merely contemplating trade-offs on sacred values provokes moral outrage beyond cognitive confusion
• Merely lingering over a taboo trade-off provokes moral outrage independent of the choice made.
• Merely possessing an object makes people value it far beyond its market worth.
• Moral communities reject Enlightenment rationality for certain sacred domains
• Moral outrage over sacred-value violations depends heavily on rhetorical framing.
• People avoid confronting sacred-secular contradictions until forced, then embrace rhetorical redefinitions.
• People behave as intuitive theologians defending sacred values, not just as economists or scientists.
• Sacred values and resource scarcity create an irreconcilable tension in social life.
• Sacredness is a functional universal that anchors compliance and resists secular contamination.
• Secular academics, despite their worldview, respond with rigidity and exhibitionism to threatened core values.
• Taboo proposals contaminate the self and provoke defensive moral reactions.
• Uncommitted taboo thoughts can contaminate and trigger symbolic moral cleansing
• Witnessing an uncondemned taboo trade-off triggers compensatory moral cleansing in observers.