The psychology of the unthinkable: Taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates,and heretical counterfactuals

Five studies explored cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to pro scribed forms of social cognition. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that people responded to taboo trade-offs that monetized sacred values with moral outr age and cleansing. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that racial egalitarians we re least likely to use, and angriest at those who did use, race-tainted bas e rates and that egalitarians who inadvertently used such base rates tried to reaffirm their fair-mindedness. Experiment 5 revealed that Christian fun damentalists were most likely to reject heretical counterfactuals that appl ied everyday causal schemata to Biblical narratives and to engage in moral cleansing after merely contemplating such possibilities. Although the resul ts fit the sacred-value-protection model (SVPM) better than rival formulati ons, the SVPM must draw on cross-cultural taxonomies of relational schemata to specify normative boundaries on thought.