How Protected are Your Protected Values
I literally spent hours thinking
through the subject of protected values.
Then I spent a couple more hours trying to identify my protected
values. I was not able to identify any. I do not know if not having them is good or
not, but it puts me in a bit of a dilemma.
The prompt for this lesson clearly assumes that I have at least three of
them. I think I will research the
subject further and discuss what I learn.
People who have protected values
consider them to be absolute and inviolable (Hoch, et al., 2001). I believe that absolutes like always, never, or
under any circumstances, etc. will make you a liar or hypocrite
eventually. Baron & Spranca, make
the statement that protected values are typically impossible for individuals to
satisfy (Baron & Spranca, 1997, p. 1).
I have values that are important to me.
I do not believe in the senseless loss of human life, yet I spent 24
years in the military prepared to cause such loss, if necessary. I traded off to defend the freedoms and way
of life we enjoy in our country. I want
my children and grandchildren to enjoy the beauty and grandeur of the world we
live in, so I do not litter; however, I do not recycle. I carefully consider the options before
knowingly making a choice that contradicts those values. Values are not traded off on a whim, but the
possibility always exists that conflicting values will force a trade-off
decision. Human beings are all different
in thought and action, but are all entitled to their opinion. Controversial as it may seem, the minority
should be heard but not allowed to negate the opinions of the majority.
Protected values create problems
for policy makers in the government who try to identify at what point trade-offs
occur. People with protected values make
that determination difficult, if not impossible. People are emotionally tied to their protected
values and when asked to place monetary values to those values, some will
answer no amount of money can justify destroying forests. This infinite value makes the resulting
analysis infinite. This renders all the
data in the analysis useless. Some of
these same people will purchase wooden furniture, use paper, and other wood
products to make their lives more comfortable.
I believe when the analysis is being done, extreme ratings should be
noted but not calculated. This way the
large majority of the data are considered. They understand that commitment to protected
values could make overall consequences worse in some sense. “Rather than simply rejecting their competing,
utilitarian intuitions, they deny that this is needed. Perhaps this is true more generally of commitment
to deontological rules, absolute or not” (Baron & Spranca, 1997, p. 13).
The results of the 1997 Baron
& Spranca study was protected values are insensitive to quantity. Less clear was absoluteness. “The strong relation between Absoluteness and
Denial protected-value score was computed for each subject suggests that people
want to have their non-utilitarian cake and eat it too” (Baron & Spranca,
1997, p. 13).
Ilana Ritov & Jonathan Baron
did a study called ‘Protected Values and Omission Bias’ in 1999 with the
primary objective to test omission bias in protected values. People that have protected values are
concerned with actions but not omission.
Ritov & Baron define omission bias as “the tendency to be less
concerned with harms caused by omission than with identical harms caused by
action’ (Ritov & Baron, 1999, p. 80). The results in three experiments supported
their hypothesis, omission bias is stronger for protected values.
Carmen Tanner & Douglas, L.
Medin conducted research on protected values in 2004. Their experiments looked at three questions:
(Tanner & Medin, 2004, p. 6)
(1) How strongly are protected values related
to acts versus omissions and moral prohibitions versus moral obligations?
(2) Is the prevalence of sobligation versus
prohibition and act versus omission bias sensitive to negative/positive
framing?
(3) Do people holding PVs respond
differently to framing manipulations?
The Tanner & Medin study produced
significantly different results than was widely accepted. Instead of replicating previous studies
showing omission bias, research suggests that protected values are associated
with commitment to action, not just prohibitions. Additionally, studies have consistently found
people will more likely express moral values through active behavior versus
inaction (Tanner & Medin, 2004).
Judgement and decision-making
research notes that protected values being linked to omission bias may have
been overgeneralized which could have caused action effects to be ignored in
decision-making (Tanner & Medin, 2004).
In this study there were two
differences in what has been the norm for the field. In past studies choices were asymmetrical in
design. Tanner and Medin created their
choices symmetrically. Secondly, the
participants were specifically asked to assume the role of a decision-maker.
There were two significant
findings in the Tanner & Medin study.
First, “people with protected values were more likely to prefer acts
than omissions. In addition, protected
values were more closely associated with a sense of obligation to act rather
than prohibitions against action (participant justifications also support this
claim)” (Tanner & Medin, 2004, p. 13). The second finding was “that participants with
strong protected values did not show framing effects” (Tanner & Medin,
2004, p. 14).
I believe that there is agreement
in the scholarly community that protected values exist. All the research has been accomplished by
just a couple of researchers whose work is contradictory. The library of work is minimal, dated, and
conflicting. Perhaps Tanner and Baron could
have collaborated on a study instead of arguing conflicting points of
view. Such a collaboration may have
produced the true nature of protected values.
As it is, Baron is retired and Tanner is working other research
interests. In my limited investigation,
it does not look like other researchers have picked up the torch to continue
the work. If I have misspoken, I offer
my apologies and express my excitement.
I think this is important research on a subject that we need to
understand. While it is true that I have
not identified any ‘protected values’ myself, I would like to understand more
about them. If we understood what
motivates each other, incidents like the North Dakota Access Pipeline may not
have become the disaster it turned in to. I am not picking sides but I must say there
had to be a better way. Understanding
and relating to one another is a good start.
References:
Baron, J., & Spranca,
M., (1997). Protected Values. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 70(1), 1–16. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1997.2690
Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H. C., & Gunther, R. E. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. (1st edition.). Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley & Sons Inc.
Ritov,
I., & Baron, J., (1999).Protected values and omission bias. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 79(2), 79-94.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1999.2839
Tanner, C., & Medin,D. L.,
(2004). Protected values: No omission bias and no framing effects. Psychonomic Bulletin &
Review, 11(1), 185-191. doi:10.3758/BF03206481
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