Sacred values

1
Sacred values consequentialism

• Will Bennis
• Northwestern University
• Department of Psychology
• MURI Meeting, 1/27/2007

2
Collaborators

• Doug Medin
• Rumen Iliev
• Sonya Sachdeva
• Dan Bartels

3
Outline

• Sacred / protected values associated with moral
  rules and lack of concern with consequences.
  
• Contrary evidence suggests sacred valuesand
  associated moral rulesmay be associated with
  greater concern with consequences.
  
• Some reasons why this makes sense
• Unrealistic closed-world assumptions
• Study participants use of relevant external
  knowledge.
  
• A challenge modeling the relationship between
  moral rules and consequences

4
Sacred Protected Values

• Sacred / protected values (SVs) are values that
  resist tradeoff no matter what the (secular)
  benefits (Fiske Tetlock, 1997 Baron Spranca,
  1997).
• While some SVs are widely shared across cultures
  (e.g., innocent human life), others may be
  individual or culture specific (e.g., which lives
  count as innocent).

5
One explanation for refusal to tradeoff SVs

• From Baron colleagues
• SVs are not about consequences,
• They are about moral rules duties to actor,
  more often, not to actin a certain way.
  
• E.g., Do no harm.
• If true, this is a potential problem for theories
  of rational choice
  
• People may often fail to maximize benefits
  relative to costs,
  
• But they should at least want to.

6
Example from field research in northeast
Wisconsin

• Participants Members of various cultural groups
  in two neighboring counties, including
  
• Native Americans living on the Menominee
  reservation,
  
• Evangelical Christians living in neighboring
  Shawano county,
  
• Avid hunters and fishers (in both locations).

7
(No Transcript)
8
Scenarios

• Requiring Native Americans to give up tribal
  regulation of fishing and hunting practices.
  
• Allowing public schools to teach secular
  (non-religious) evolutionary theory in science
  class, but not a Christian perspective on
  creation.
• Allowing the mother and family to decide whether
  or not to have an abortion in cases where she
  would almost certainly lose her life delivering
  the child.
• Allowing farmers to use fertilizers that pose a
  very small risk of groundwater contamination if
  they dramatically increase the yield of a large
  field.

9
Participants asked to indicate agreement with 2
statements

• This is the kind of decision where it's best to
  rely on moral rules of right and wrong
  
• This is the kind of decision where it's best to
  weigh the costs benefits/pros cons

10
7 pt. Likert scale, 7 completely agreeAverage
across scenarios(All four scenarios had the same
cross-over pattern). This is the type of
decision where its
p 11
But

• Conflicting findings (Bartels Medin, in press
  Connolly Reb, 2003)
  
• Depending on how stimuli are constructed,
• People with sacred values appear more instead of
  less concerned with consequences.

12
One possible explanation

• Under certain conditions, participants may
  believe that
  
• Relying on moral rules is reliable way to achieve
  good consequences,
  
• Whereas weighing anticipated costs benefits is
  not.
  
• These conditions may be associated with sacred
  values (i.e., cases where actions are judged
  unacceptable no matter how great the benefits).
  
• If true
• Disagreement with the statement best to weigh
  the costs benefits
  
• agreement with the statement best to rely on
  moral rules of right and wrong
  
• ? I do not care about consequences.
• Ill discuss why this might be make sense later
  in talk.

13
Two sources of suggestive evidence

• that people with SVs believe relying on moral
  rules helps them improve consequences
  
• Relationship between the endorsement of two
  statements
  
• This is the kind of decision where its best to
  rely on moral rules of right and wrong
  
• This is the kind of decision where relying on
  moral rules of right and wrong will lead to
  better long-term consequences.

14
r 0.74
15
2) Endorsement of 2 statements as to when/why to
follow moral rules

• The moral rules of right and wrong that I
  endorse should be followed even if I knew in some
  particular case that they would lead to worse
  long-term consequences.
• I endorse the moral rules of right and wrong
  that I do specifically because I believe they
  lead to better long-term consequences. If I knew
  they did not lead to better long-term
  consequences, I would no longer endorse those
  moral rules.

16
Mean response 7 point Likert scale (7 comp
letely agree).
p.001 by two-tailed t-test.
17
Why might Ps think relying on moral rules works
better than weighing costs benefits?

• Decision researchers (including ourselves) tend
  to make a number of closed-world assumptions
  
• That Ps will and should limit the information
  they use to that provided in the scenario itself
  (i.e., they will not use experience or knowledge
  they bring to scenario).
• That Ps will accept the information provided as
  certain, even if it couldnt realistically be.
  
• That Ps will not add constraints to unconstrained
  variables, even if those variables would always
  be constrained in a real-world decision.

18
Participants often did not accept these
closed-world assumptions -1

• In response to the sacred value measure, X is
  unacceptable no matter how great the benefits
  
• many Ps took benefits to be constrained by
  realistic possibilities of the scenario.

19
Participants often did not accept these
closed-world assumptions -2

• When considering weighing costs benefits, Ps
  often
  
• Included pre-existing assessments of costs and
  benefits,
  
• Limited costs benefits to secular costs
  benefits in accordance with common connotations
  of the term,
  
• And recognized that the anticipated costs
  benefits resulting from the scenarios were more
  or less certain depending on characteristics of
  the scenario.

20
Participants often did not accept these
closed-world assumptions -3

• When considering the value of relying on moral
  rules
  
• Ps often included the moral rules dependence on
  past experience
  
• Or on external sources of knowledge outside the
  scenario, such as their religion or tradition.

21

• Given our closed-world assumptions Weighing
  anticipated costs benefits may always lead to
  better consequences than following moral rules.
  
• But given our participants use of pre-existing
  experience knowledge A preference for relying
  on moral rules over weighing anticipated costs
  benefits may be adaptive if limited to selective
  situations.

22
Not meant to suggest Ps will always be conscious
of connection between moral rules consequences

• Learned associations between rules and
  consequences are not necessarily available at
  conscious/explicit level.
  
• For example, the rules may be learned
• Through implicit/emotional experiential
  learning,
  
• By other members of community / ancestors
  socialized as moral rules,
  
• Through evolutionary mechanisms (e.g., tit for
  tat).

23
A challenge for modelers

• Can we model the relationship between
• Study participants preference for relying on
  moral rules or weighing costs and benefits,
  
• Different learning / decision-making processes
• Weighing anticipated costs and benefits
• Individual trial error rule learning
• Group level trial error rule learning
• Evolutionary rule learning
• The structure of the task environment (given
  these scenarios as they are faced in practice by
  the research population). E.g.
  
• Estimates of the degree to which costs and
  benefits can be anticipated,
  
• The time-span across which consequences might
  occur,
  
• Stability versus rates of change in the task
  domain.
  
• In order to compare anticipated performance of
  relying on moral rules versus weighing
  anticipated costs benefits?

24
End
25

• It seemed like a good idea at the time.