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Models for Intercultural Collaboration and Negotiation pp 133–143Cite as

Negotiating Cultural Conflicts Over Sacred Values

Part of the Advances in Group Decision and Negotiation book series (AGDN,volume 6)

Abstract

Most current approaches to negotiation of resource and political conflicts assume that parties to these conflicts are rational actors that weigh the costs and benefits of their choices, treat values as though they are fungible, and then act in a way that maximizes their benefits. However, recent research suggests that this is not the case. In other words, people do not treat all values as amenable to tradeoffs, but rather they distinguish between material values having to do with resource pricing and markets and sacred values that reside in the moral realm. Moreover, people seem to apply different reasoning to sacred vs. material values. Even more crucially, what is considered sacred and what is considered material varies among cultures. In this chapter we discuss research by us and others into the nature of sacred values in real world conflicts and the implications of the findings for ongoing political conflicts.

Keywords

  • Sacred values
  • Material values
  • Negotiation
  • Political conflicts
  • Backfire effect

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. New School for Social Research, 80 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10011, USA

    Kate Jassin, Hammad Sheikh, Nadine Obeid & Nichole Argo

  2. Department of Psychology, New School for Social Research, 80 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10011, USA

    Jeremy Ginges

Authors
  1. Kate Jassin
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  2. Hammad Sheikh
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  3. Nadine Obeid
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  4. Nichole Argo
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  5. Jeremy Ginges
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeremy Ginges .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Katia Sycara

  2. Dept. Psychology, University of Maryland Dept. Psychology, College Park, Maryland, USA

    Michele Gelfand

  3. Behavioral & Social Sciences, U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral & Social Sciences, Arlington, Virgin Islands, USA

    Allison Abbe

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Jassin, K., Sheikh, H., Obeid, N., Argo, N., Ginges, J. (2013). Negotiating Cultural Conflicts Over Sacred Values. In: Sycara, K., Gelfand, M., Abbe, A. (eds) Models for Intercultural Collaboration and Negotiation. Advances in Group Decision and Negotiation, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5574-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5574-1_6

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