The psychology of the taboo trade-off: Surprising insights into sacred values, and what they mean for negotiation.

This intriguing Scientific American article argues certain things (your lucky beer mug, "right to choose", "right to life", whatever) have a special sacred meaning to people, and that negotiating about these can be very tricky. I'm skeptical about reductionistic pop psychology, but I wonder if this perhaps explains the MSU administration's seemingly irrational, rigid position on a variety of small issues (no bulletin boards for example): maybe they represent a bigger sacred something to them. If we could figure out what this is maybe we'd have a better handle on how to negotiate with them. (Of course, the converse is also probably true).

"What truly distinguishes sacred values from secular ones is how people behave when asked to compromise them. When people are asked to trade their sacred values for values considered to be secular—what psychologist Philip Tetlock refers to as a “taboo tradeoff”—they exhibit moral outrage, express anger and disgust, become increasingly inflexible in negotiations, and display an insensitivity to a strict cost-benefit analysis of the exchange....A more successful tack for negotiating over sacred values, as it turns out, is to simply use the right words. ...using specific rhetorical strategies can make trade-offs seem less taboo and can facilitate conflict resolution." http://bit.ly/9vGnNn