Sacred values &
consequentialism
Will Bennis
Northwestern University
Department of Psychology
MURI Meeting, 1/27/2007
Collaborators
Doug Medin
Rumen Iliev
Sonya Sachdeva
Dan Bartels
Outline
1.
Sacred / protected values associated with moral rules
and lack of concern with consequences.
Contrary evidence suggests sacred values—and
associated moral rules—may be associated with
greater concern with consequences.
Some reasons why this makes sense:
2.
3.
–
–
4.
Unrealistic closed-world assumptions
Study participants’ use of relevant external knowledge.
A challenge: modeling the relationship between moral
rules and consequences
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).
One explanation for refusal to
tradeoff SVs
• From Baron & colleagues:
– SVs are not about consequences,
– They are about moral rules: duties to act—or, more
often, not to act—in 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.
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).
Scenarios
1. Requiring Native Americans to give up tribal regulation
of fishing and hunting practices.
2. Allowing public schools to teach secular (non-religious)
evolutionary theory in science class, but not a Christian
perspective on creation.
3. 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.
4. Allowing farmers to use fertilizers that pose a very small
risk of groundwater contamination if they dramatically
increase the yield of a large field.
Participants asked to indicate
agreement with 2 statements
1. “This is the kind of decision where it's
best to rely on moral rules of right and
wrong”
2. “This is the kind of decision where it's
best to [weigh the costs & benefits/pros
& cons]”
7 pt. Likert scale, 7 = completely agree
Average across scenarios
(All four scenarios had the same cross-over pattern).
“This is the type of decision where it’s…
7
6
5
SV="No"
4
SV="Yes"
3
2
1
"This is the type of decision where it's best to rely
on moral rules"
p < .001
"This is the type of decision where it's best to
weigh the costs & benefits"
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.
One possible explanation:
•
Under certain conditions, participants may believe that
–
–
•
These conditions may be associated with sacred
values (i.e., cases where actions are judged
unacceptable no matter how great the benefits).
If true…
•
–
–
–
•
Relying on moral rules is reliable way to achieve good
consequences,
Whereas weighing anticipated costs & benefits is not.
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.”
I’ll discuss why this might be make sense later in talk.
Two sources
of suggestive evidence…
…that people with SVs believe relying on moral
rules helps them improve consequences:
1. Relationship between the endorsement of two
statements:
a. “This is the kind of decision where it’s best to rely on
moral rules of right and wrong”
b. “This is the kind of decision where relying on moral
rules of right and wrong will lead to better long-term
consequences.”
7
6
5
SV="No"
4
SV="Yes"
3
2
1
"This is the kind of decision where it's best to "This is the kind of decision where relying on
rely on moral rules of right and wrong."
moral rules of right and wrong will lead to better
long-term consequences."
r = 0.74
2) Endorsement of 2 statements as
to when/why to follow moral rules:
a. “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.”
b. “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.”
7
4
1
Moral rules even if worse Moral rules because better
long-term consequences. long-term consequences.
• Mean response
• 7 point Likert scale (7 = completely agree).
• p=.001 by two-tailed t-test.
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 couldn’t realistically be.
– That Ps will not add constraints to unconstrained
variables, even if those variables would always be
constrained in a real-world decision.
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.
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.
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.
• 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.
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).
A challenge for modelers:
•
Can we model the relationship between
1. Study participants’ preference for “relying on moral rules” or “weighing costs and
benefits,“
2. Different learning / decision-making processes
•
•
•
•
Weighing anticipated costs and benefits
Individual trial & error rule learning
Group level trial & error rule learning
Evolutionary rule learning
3. 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”?
End
… It seemed like a good idea at the time.