1. Are Protected Values Quantity Sensitive? Rumen Iliev Northwestern University

2. Overview Sacred/protected values –Definitions –Properties –Challenges Context effects in a choice set –Examples –Connection to protected values Empirical study on context effects in the moral domain Conclusion Future directions

3. Sacred/Protected Values Tetlock et al. (2000) defined sacred values as “any value that a moral community implicitly or explicitly treats as possessing infinite and transcendental significance that precludes comparisons, tradeoffs, or indeed any other mingling with bounded or secular values”. Baron and Spranca (1997) defined protected values as “… those that resist tradeoffs with other values, particularly with economic values”. The rejection of tradeoffs is a challenge for utility based models in decision making

4. Sacred/Protected Values: Properties Sacred values appear to have distinctive properties that make them different from secular values: –infinite utility –omission bias –quantity insensitivity –denial of the need for tradeoffs –moral obligation –emotional responses

5. Sacred/Protected Values: Challenges Challenges for research on sacred values –By definition a person who endorses sacred/protected values would reject a tradeoff (at least of sacred for secular goods) –Most of the tasks exploring the properties of protected values rely on explicit tradeoffs Would you harm 5 species in order to save 10 other species? Is destroying 1 acre of old grown forest less wrong than destroying 2 acres? How much money would you accept in order to give up your land?

6. Sacred/Protected Values: Alternative approaches Alternative approaches –Indirect influence on cognitive processes Stroop interference –Heuristics and Biases Representativeness and Anchoring –Context Effects Influencing choice preferences via “decoy” alternatives

7. Attraction Effect Two alternative choice set P(alt.2)<P(alt.3)

8. Attraction Effect Two alternative choice set –P(alt.2)<P(alt.3) Three alternative choice set (alt.1 is a decoy) –But P(alt.2|alt.1) >P(alt.3|alt.1)

9. Compromise effect Alt. 2 becomes a compromise when alt.1 is added to the choice set P(alt.2)<P(alt.3) P(alt.2|alt.1) >P(alt.3|alt.1)

10. Why Context Effects Are Interesting? For traditional judgment and decision making: –Independence of irrelevant alternatives: The decision maker has complete preference order of all options –Pragmatic purposes One can influence market purchases For morally motivated decision making: –If sacred/protected values imply infinite utility on a particular dimension we should not expect context effects when moral issues are at stake –Even thought there is significant amount of research on moral-secular tradeoffs, relatively little has been done on moral-moral tradeoffs

11. Experiment 1 Participants: –77 NU undergraduates participated for a course credit Stimuli: –12 choice sets: Abortions Endangered species Wrongly convicted prisoners Starving children Example: Tradeoff between preventing more abortions or saving more starving children –6 attraction scenarios and 6 compromise scenarios –Protected values questions Action X is unacceptable no matter what the benefits.

12. Example: Compromise Scenario Condition 1 »Plan A will prevent 2000 abortions and save 10 species »Plan B will prevent 3000 abortions and save 8 species »Plan C will prevent 4000 abortions and save 6 species Condition 2 »Plan A will prevent 1000 abortions and save 12 species »Plan B will prevent 2000 abortions and save 10 species »Plan C will prevent 3000 abortions and save 8 species

13. Example: Compromise

14. Example: Attraction Scenario Condition 1 »Plan A will prevent 2000 abortions and save 10 species »Plan B will prevent 3000 abortions and save 8 species »Plan C will prevent 2900 abortions and save 7 species Condition 2 »Plan A will prevent 1900 abortions and save 9 species »Plan B will prevent 2000 abortions and save 10 species »Plan C will prevent 3000 abortions and save 8 species

15. Example: Attraction

16. Overview of results Very strong attraction effects but essentially no compromise effects Little difference as a function of whether one or more dimensions involve a sacred value

21. Experiment 1: Summary PVs were significant predictor of subjects’ choice (R 2 =.22, p<.05) Overall attraction effect, but no reliable compromise effect Attraction effect was found even in case when people had PVs on only one of the dimensions

22. Experiment 1: Limitations Randomized between-subject condition but not within-subjects Positive framed scenarios but negatively framed protected values –abortions prevented/ species saved –actions prohibited No control comparison –may be compromise effects are less reliable and more difficult to detect

23. Experiment 2 Within-subject randomization Negatively framed scenarios –Damage control scenarios where your plan will cause more damage or another dimension Updated dimensions –abortions, dolphins, homeless people, starving children (total of 18 scenarios) Secular choices –Laptops, cameras, iPods, tires (total of 8 scenarios) Participants: –61 NU undergraduates participated for a course credit

28. Experiment 1:Positive framingExperiment 2:Negative framing PVsCompromiseAttractionCompromiseAttraction None.0116.30*.32314.97* Only one8.76*(reversed)17.52*12.98*(reversed)6.30* Both.508.59*19.30*21.00* Secular CompromiseAttraction 21.49*28.88* Χ 2 statistics

29. Summary PVs predict the chosen alternative Scenarios that involve morally relevant items show typical attraction effect but no consistent compromise effects Protected values did not suppress attraction effects Morally relevant scenarios did not show compromise effect when none of the dimensions involved protected values

30. Conclusion Reliable attraction effect is consistent with the hypothesis for implicit trade offs even when sacred values are included From modeling perspective, the attraction effect suggests that sacred values could be modeled using dimensional weights The difference between attraction and compromise effects could be due to differential impact on cognitive processes when morally relevant tradeoffs are considered –value-shift explanations dealt with attraction effect only – reasons based choice and loss aversion explanations were focused on compromise effect only From pragmatic perspective, adding a decoy alternative might contribute for approval or disapproval of a proposed plan

31. Future Directions Adding a justification condition Context effects in voting behavior –adding a third candidate during an election race Context effect in believe propagation –Interactions between neighboring nodes in a social/expert network

32. Acknowledgments Doug Medin Andrzej Tarlowski Craig Joseph Dan Bartels Sara Unsworth Sonya Sachdeva Will Bennis