Sacred Values as Heuristics

Can being faced with a decision involving morals be a good thing? Research has shown in the past that morally-laden decisions are perceived as difficult and unpleasant. Therefore, conventional wisdom suggests that people would react characteristically when faced with decision-making with moral considerations, such as avoiding being placed in a position to make moral decisions, or effortfully spending more time deliberating over difficult moral decisions.

However, perhaps there's more to it than meets the eye, and Hanselmann and Tanner from the University of Zurich think so. In a very concise study, Hanselmann and Tanner (2008) sought to show that the involvement of moral issues and values can, instead, actually facilitate our decision-making. By invoking what are known as sacred values (absolute and inviolable values), we may end up spending less time thinking about the dilemma simply because an option that has sacred value makes us think that it cannot be compromised.

Every dilemma or decision involves some extent of trade-off. The authors conceptualized three types of trade-offs for the study:

Taboo trade-off
a situation that pits a secular value (i.e. a value that does not hold moral worth) against a sacred value

Tragic trade-off
a situation that pits two sacred values against each other

Routine trade-off
a situation that pits two secular values against each other

One might thus think of a routine trade-off in the case of a typical job dilemma. Faced with employment in Company A vs Company B, one might consider trading off mundane items such as salary, distance or working environment. On the other hand, an extreme (though commonplace) example of a tragic trade-off would be to decide whether to save one's parent or an offspring instead in the event of a fire.

In the first experiment, 84 students from the University of Zurich were presented with three scenarios representing a taboo, tragic or routine trade-off. Each scenario provided a choice between two options. An example of a taboo trade-off scenario was as follows:

Imagine that you are the president of the local authority of a village that has been severely affected by a flood. The local authority is discussing whether to invest a considerable amount of the annual budget in improved flood protection measures. In this case, however, the village would have to forego a planned facelift for the village square. As president, you have to decide between the improvements in flood protection (option 1) and the facelift for the village square (option 2).

Participants were then asked to rate how they felt about the decision, such as how emotionally negative the decision was and how difficult it was to decide on an option. The following results were gathered:

As can be seen, the difficulty of decision-making was lowest when sacred values were pitted against secular values, showing that, although decision-making involving some degree of moral choice is still emotionally unpleasant, it can lead to easier decision-making. A second experiment, which was a more complex (with multiple traits to access decision difficulty and affectiveness) but fundamentally similar experiment, was conducted and the results were replicated.

Tetlock (2003) had assumed that the mere contemplation of trade-offs that involve sacred values elicits distress and disturbance. There could very well be an adaptive or functional purpose to our negative perception of moral choices which makes us acutely aware that compromising on sacred values can have adverse consequences. In a sense, we are psychologically 'punished' for even contemplating the trade-off of sacred values, so let alone act against our instinct to preserve sacred values. These findings thus suggest that reliance on sacred values may therefore work as a heuristic that we use to increase the efficiency of our decision-making.

Martin Hanselmann, & Carmen Tanner (2008). Taboos and conflicts in decision making: Sacred values, decision difficulty, and emotions Judgment and Decision Making, 3 (1)

Tetlock, P. (2003). Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values and taboo cognitions Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7 (7), 320-324 DOI: 10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00135-9

Is your best friend’s relationship advice/decision really the best for you?

When you have a relationship decision to make and you are at a loss as to which is your best available option, are your friends the ones you turn to? If your answer is yes, the following article may make you think twice in the future.

In the article Risk-Taking in Relationships: Difference in deciding for Oneself Versus for a Friend, the authors explored the idea that people tend to make riskier decisions or give riskier advice for their friends as opposed to when they are making one for themselves. Most existing research has so far focused on people making decisions for themselves. However, there is a lack of empirical research on decision making for others, which is a rather common situation in life. Examples include doctors making decisions for patients or politicians for their constituents. The authors decided that decision making in relationships would be a good starting point as participants are undergraduates, often with a good chance of encountering such relationship choices.

The first experiment asked 201 participants to fill in a questionnaire of 11 scenarios concerning real-life relationship problems. There were two options for each scenario, one that was risk-averse (e.g. a fun time with friends) and another that was risk-taking (e.g. potentially having a fun time with an attractive member of the opposite sex). All participants were grouped into 3 categories: (1) deciding for themselves, (2) deciding for a same-sex friend, and (3) advising a same sex friend. A risk-averse option receives a score of 0 and the alternative gets a score of 1. Therefore, if a participant chose the risk-taking option for all 11 situations, the score would be 11.

The results indicated that participants made riskier choices for their friends as opposed to for themselves. Moreover, results showed that there were no differences for the other-decision group and the other-advice group. However, a life impact analysis of the scenarios reveals that the impact of the situation on the person’s future life could influence the self-other difference. Therefore the second experiment was conducted to investigate this possibility.

In the second experiment, 20 scenarios were pre-rated with 12 chosen. Six of them were of the highest score for low life-impact and vice versa for the high impact scenarios. In general, the results concurred with the first experiment and the possibility of self-other difference from low or high impact scenarios was also confirmed. Participants were more risk-taking in low impact scenarios and more risk-averse in high impact scenarios. However, a non-linear analysis suggested that the conclusion might not be as straightforward. Evidence from the non-linear analysis indicated that not every low-impact scenario had participants choosing a more risk-taking decision for their friend. Self-other difference was non-existent or reversed in three of the six low-impact scenarios. For example, when asked if they would give their phone number to someone they just met at a party, 80% said they would but only 67% said they would tell their friend to do the same thing. Experiment 3 sought to find out why people take more risk in some scenarios when it comes to deciding for a friend while other scenarios produce a completely different set of results.

Before discussing Experiment 3 proper, a brief review of some literature to provide rational explanations will prove useful. People in general take into account more information when deciding for oneself than for others. One way to interpret this is that positive consequences are accounted for in oneself and others but people will also focus on the negative consequences only when deciding for themselves. The corollary is that there is a bias towards riskier decisions for one's friend since positive consequences weigh more in the decision-making process. Insofar as this explanation is true, we can reasonably expect self-other differences to disappear for high-impact scenarios, but what about the three low impact ones previously mentioned?

Each scenario (giving out a phone number, going to an out-of-town concert and buying a gold chain for a significant other) has the potential to produce negative outcomes. For example, going out of town for a concert may be dangerous if you find yourself too far from home with a person you've just met. As a consequence, there might be a chance that such considerations are not completely ignored despite the scenario being generally of a low impact.

There are generally two mechanisms by which negative information can be directed when making decisions. The first states that such information is not even brought to mind when deciding for others. If this is the case, explicitly stating the negative consequence would serve to negate the self-other difference. The second possibility is that the consequences, albeit being brought to mind, are given less weight.

Experiment 3 tested both versions. For this experiment, each scenario was provided with both positive and negative consequences for each risk option (same questionnaire as Experiment 2) for one group and no such consequential information for another group. If this inclusion eliminates the self-other difference, the first mechanism is supported. In addition, the conclusion of this experiment asked participants to provide reasons for their choices in the three low-impact scenarios with the largest self-other differences as in Experiment 2. If participants stated more negative reasons, it would mean they were aware but chose to ignore the consequences.

Results of Experiment 3 indicated that, regardless whether consequential information is present, the self-other difference is not removed for the low-impact scenarios. For the open-ended questions at the end, participants gave more negative reasons when deciding for themselves than for others. This raises an interesting question because it contradicts the prospect theory where people in general place more importance on losses than on gains. Maybe we place a different emphasis on our decisions when it comes to deciding for others.

With these results in mind, we definitely do know that people take more risks for their friends in decisions, at least with respect to relationships. So, before the next time you go banging on your friend’s door regarding your relationship problems, do bear in mind what their decision could mean to you.


Beisswanger, A., Stone, E., Hupp, J., & Allgaier, L. (2003). Risk Taking in Relationships: Differences in Deciding for Oneself Versus for a Friend Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 25 (2), 121-135 DOI: 10.1207/S15324834BASP2502_3