Protected values
Also known as: Sacred values, Absolute values
Commitments people refuse to trade against money at any price, on principle.
What it means
Protected values are commitments people treat as absolute, refusing in principle to trade them off against money or other goods no matter the amount. The mechanism is rule-based rather than calculating: the value attaches to the act itself, not its consequences, so the mind treats 'how much would you accept' as the wrong question and answers with anger instead of a number. They show quantity insensitivity (the scale of the consequence barely matters — destroying a hundred of something registers as no worse than destroying one), a bias toward omission over action, and moral outrage at anyone who proposes the exchange. They surface in debates over selling organs, logging old-growth forest, paying for blood, or pricing safety. The limit is that they are often more rhetorical than real: reframe the choice, add a plausible excuse, and people quietly trade after all. They matter because any offer that prices a protected value can backfire and harden opposition.
Examples
Ask a parent what sum would make it acceptable to sell their child's kidney and you do not get a figure back; you get offence, and a refusal to discuss the price.
A utility offers a town cash compensation for siting a waste facility nearby. Support falls rather than rises: the payment reframes a civic duty as a bribe, and residents dig in.
A safety review asks engineers to put a dollar figure on an acceptable number of injuries per year. The room refuses the exercise, and the meeting stalls over the framing rather than the number.
First described in Baron & Spranca (1997); Tetlock's taboo trade-offs.