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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Taboos and conflicts in decision making: Sacred values, decision difficulty, and emotions
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Carmen Tanner
  • Martin Hanselmann
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Judgment and Decision Making
Publisher Society for Judgment and Decision Making
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 19302975
Volume 3
Number 1
Page Range 51 - 63
Date 2008
Abstract Text Previous studies suggest that choices are perceived as difficult as well as negatively emotion-laden when they tap into moral considerations. However, we propose that the involvement of moral issues and values can also facilitate decisions because people often insistently preclude them from trade-offs with other values. Because such values are treated as inviolable and absolute, they are called sacred values (e. g., Tetlock et al., 2000). Two experiments examined the influence of sacred values (measured by a recent self-report scale) and variation of trade-off type (taboo, tragic, routine trade-offs) on perceived decision difficulty and negative emotions. As hypothesized, decision difficulty and negative emotions show diverging patterns as a function of sacred values and trade-off types. When the decision situation involved two conflicting sacred values (i.e., tragic trade-off), people perceived the decision task as emotionally stressful and difficult. However, when the decision situation was associated with only one sacred value (i.e., taboo trade-off), people perceived the task as more negatively emotion-laden, but as easier to solve, compared to a situation not involving sacred values (i.e., routine trade-off). These findings suggest that reliance on sacred values may work as a heuristic.
Official URL http://journal.sjdm.org/bb5/bb5.html
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