Protected Values and Omission Bias.

Protected values (PVs) are those that people think should not be traded off. Baron and Spranca (1997) proposed that such values result from rules concerning actions (as opposed to values for outcomes). This proposal implies that PVs should show a particularly large bias against harmful acts that undermine the value in question, as opposed to harmful omissions (omission bias). We found this correlation between PVs and omission bias in 3 experiments, using stimuli of the sort that we used before to demonstrate omission bias. In 2 experiments, we also found a weak tendency for PVs to be associated with lack of concern for the number of acts involved, which is analogous to earlier results showing an association with lack of concern for the quantity of outcomes. Finally, 1 experiment showed that some people are willing to sacrifice values to prevent losses more than they are willing to sacrifice these values for gains. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.

[1]  L. Petrinovich,et al.  Influence of Wording and Framing Effects on Moral Intuitions , 1996 .

[2]  J. Baron.  Biases in the quantitative measurement of values for public decisions , 1997 .

[3]  J. Baron,et al.  Outcome Knowledge, Regret, and Omission Bias , 1995 .

[4]  J. Baron,et al.  Omission and commission in judgment and choice , 1991 .

[5]  J. Baron,et al.  Intuitions about penalties and compensation in the context of tort law , 1993 .

[6]  J. Baron,et al.  Status-quo and omission biases , 1992 .

[7]  H Kunreuther,et al.  Omission Bias and Pertussis Vaccination , 1994, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[8]  L. A. Goodman,et al.  Measures of association for cross classifications , 1979 .

[9]  Jonathan Baron,et al.  Decision-making biases in children and early adolescents: exploratory studies , 1993 .

[10]  J. Baron,et al.  Framing effects in the evaluation of multiple risk reduction , 1993 .

[11]  Jonathan Baron,et al.  Regular ArticleProtected Values , 1997 .

[12]  The effect of normative beliefs on anticipated emotions. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[13]  H. Arkes,et al.  Factors influencing the use of a decision rule in a probabilistic task , 1986 .

[14]  J. H. Steiger.  Tests for comparing elements of a correlation matrix. , 1980 .

[15]  Baron,et al.  Protected Values , 1997, Virology.

[16]  Jonathan Baron,et al.  Behavioral Law and Economics: Reluctance to Vaccinate: Omission Bias and Ambiguity , 1990 .

[17]  John Sabini,et al.  Moralities of Everyday Life , 1982 .

[18]  R. Treiman,et al.  Some problems in the study of differences in cognitive processes , 1980, Memory & cognition.

[19]  J. Baron,et al.  How serious are expressions of protected values? , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[20]  Jonathan Baron,et al.  Reference Points and Omission Bias , 1994 .

[21]  H Kunreuther,et al.  Cognitive processes and the decisions of some parents to forego pertussis vaccination for their children. , 1996, Journal of clinical epidemiology.