Concept and taboo trade-offs
The sociologist Émile Durkheim (1912) argued that societies create a realm of the sacred set apart from the everyday profane. Baron and Spranca (1997) showed that people hold protected values they will not give up for any compensation, and that for such values the act itself matters more than outcomes. Tetlock and colleagues (2000) reported that merely considering taboo trade-offs that compare sacred values with money, such as selling organs or adoption rights, makes people angry, leads them to condemn those who entertain such ideas and prompts acts of moral cleansing. Tetlock (2003) described this as taboo cognition that protects sacred values.
Conflict and backfire
Ginges and colleagues (2007) surveyed Israeli settlers and Palestinians. On issues involving sacred values, such as holy sites or the right of return, adding money or economic compensation to peace deals increased anger and support for violence. By contrast, proposals in which the other side made symbolic concessions on its own sacred values or formally apologized for historical wrongs reduced opposition. Atran and Ginges (2012) explained that people committed to sacred values can become devoted actors who accept great sacrifices without weighing costs and benefits. This is why rational bargaining models alone struggle to resolve some conflicts.
Neural mechanisms and political implications
Berns and colleagues (2012) reported brain-imaging results showing that when people process statements about sacred values, regions involved in rules and judgments of right and wrong are more active than regions involved in weighing costs and benefits. Sacred values are thus processed as rules to be kept rather than items to be traded. Sacred values connect to the sanctity foundation of moral foundations theory and are used to explain why issues such as abortion and gun control fuel affective polarization. Researchers suggest that on such issues symbolic acts that respect the other side's values can open the door to negotiation more than material rewards.
FAQ
- What are sacred values in simple terms?
- Values people believe can never be traded for money or gain, such as life, faith or homeland.
- Why do monetary offers backfire?
- Comparing sacred values with money is itself felt as an insult and provokes anger, so symbolic concessions or apologies can be more effective.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Baron, J., & Spranca, M. (1997). Protected values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70(1), 1–16. Protected values resist trade-offs.
- Tetlock, P. E., Kristel, O. V., Elson, S. B., Green, M. C., & Lerner, J. S. (2000). The psychology of the unthinkable: Taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical counterfactuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(5), 853–870. Taboo trade-offs trigger moral outrage and cleansing.
- Tetlock, P. E. (2003). Thinking the unthinkable: Sacred values and taboo cognitions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(7), 320–324. A concise overview of sacred values theory.
- Ginges, J., Atran, S., Medin, D., & Shikaki, K. (2007). Sacred bounds on rational resolution of violent political conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(18), 7357–7360. Material incentives backfire on sacred issues in the Middle East.
- Atran, S., & Ginges, J. (2012). Religious and sacred imperatives in human conflict. Science, 336(6083), 855–857. How sacred values drive human conflict.
- Berns, G. S., Bell, E., Capra, C. M., Prietula, M. J., Moore, S., Anderson, B., Ginges, J., & Atran, S. (2012). The price of your soul: Neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367(1589), 754–762. Neural evidence that sacred values are processed as rules.
- Durkheim, É. (1912/1995). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (K. E. Fields, Trans.). New York: Free Press. Durkheim's classic distinction between sacred and profane.