How serious are expressions of protected values?

Abstract

People think that some things that they value should be protected from trade-offs with other things. For example, people think that no economic gain is great enough to justify clear-cutting old-growth forest. The authors probed the stability of these protected values (PVs) in several ways. Subjects were asked to think of counterexamples, and this had some effect on PVs. Subjects were then asked how they would resolve conflicts between 2 PVs. Resolutions did not differ from those between other values, but subjects tended to feel that conflicts between PVs did not occur in reality. Despite people's claims that PVs are unchanged by variation in quantity, expression of PVs was reduced when the magnitude or probability of the violation of a PV was smaller. In summary, PVs appear to be labile and amenable to challenge. Despite earlier concerns, apparent PVs may not always preclude the use of valuation measures in cost-effectiveness analysis or negotiated agreement on controversial issues. People think that some of their values are protected from tradeoffs with other values (Baron & Spranca, 1997; Tetlock, Lemer, & Peterson, 1996). Many of these values concern natural resources, such as species and pristine ecosystems. People with protected values (PVs) for these things do not think they should be sacrificed for any compensating benefit, no matter how small the sacrifice or how large the benefit. The term value here is used to mean utility, that is, the measure of desirability that decisions are meant to increase (Baron, 2000). In an economic sense, when values are protected, the marginal rate at which one good can substitute for another is infinite. For example, no amount of money can substitute for a type of environmental decline. Several researchers have noted that PVs cause problems for quantitative elicitation of values, as is done in cost-benefit analysis or decision analysis (

Protected Values and Omission Bias

“…Although we expect a correlation between PVs and zero thresholds, the weaker hypothesis says only that the deontological prohibition on action is one consideration that is weighed against other considerations, such as those based on consequences. This weaker hypothesis is consistent with the results of Baron and Leshner (1999), who found several other ways in which people qualify their commitments to PVs.…”

what's in a heuristic?

“…For example, Tetlock's own empirical work suggests, importantly, that people's initial agreement with arguments against biotechnology tend to dissipate when they are made alert to tradeoffs (see Tetlock 2000). Other work strongly supports his general point, demonstrating that once people are alerted to tradeoffs and complexities, their strong moral intuitions tend to shift (Baron & Leshner 2000). So far, we are in complete accord.…”

“…A larger qualification: I believe that many apparent deontological rules are productively seen as heuristics, in the form of simple rules of thumb that generally work well but that also lead to major blunders. The literature on protected values, emphasized by Ritov, strongly supports this understanding; it shows that protected values become less absolute once people's attention is drawn to tradeoffs (Baron & Leshner 2000). People's automatic moral intuitions, based on heuristics, can often be shown to be too crude, even to the satisfaction of the very people who strongly hold those intuitions.…”

Ni ingenuos ni malvados. Enmarcado y estrategias dominantes en la toma de decisiones en contextos de ignorancia

“…En el caso de los profesionales, contestaron el cuestionario en línea, a través de una aplicación generada en Google Drive. Este procedimiento de aplicación de cuestionario a través de Internet ha sido avalado por investigadores de la decisión como Baron (2001;Baron y Leshner, 2000). Cada ítem representaba una situación de elección con cuatro opciones posibles, en cada una de las cuales se obtenían distintas utilidades (según ciertos estados) y se aplicaban distintos principios de decisión.…”