Group Identity Salience in Sacred Value Based Cultural Conflict: An Examination of the Hindu-Muslim Identities in the Kashmir and Babri Mosque Issues Sonya Sachdeva (s-sachdeva@northwestern.edu) Department of Psychology, 2029 Sheridan Rd. Evanston, IL 60025 Douglas L. Medin (medin@northwestern.edu) Department of Psychology, 2029 Sheridan Rd. Evanston, IL 60025 Abstract The sacred values of a community are critical in understanding cultural conflict. When an attempt is made to trade a sacred value with a secular good, it evokes feelings of anger (taboo- tradeoff) but less so when that sacred value is traded off with another sacred value (tragic). Previous work has shown that participants who expressed sacred values for an issue were more resistant to taboo than tragic peace deals. Our objective in the present study was to extend these findings to conflicts between Hindus and Muslims over Kashmir and the Babri Mosque, the former more salient to Muslim identity and the latter more salient to Hindu identity. While replicating the previous interaction between sacred values and tradeoff type, we also found a moderating role of how salient an issue was for group identity. Only the participants for whom the issue was salient showed the previous correlates of sacred values. Keywords: Culture and cognition; sacred values; inter- group conflict. The separation between the sacred and profane spheres of life was first underlined by Émile Durkheim at the turn of the 20th century. Although he mainly used the concept of sacred values as the means through which religious symbols and ultimately religion develop, the definition he used for sacred values persists to this day. The sacred and profane are the two spheres through which humans navigate in their daily lives. The profane is countable, measurable and routine whereas the sacred is sacred, simply because it is none of those things. Durkheim defined sacred as pertaining to that which is transcendental and non-utilitarian (Durkheim, 1912/1995). Recently, psychologists have transformed the mainly philosophical and sociological concept of sacred values to a functional psychological construct. Phillip Tetlock and his colleagues (2000) developed the Sacred Value Protection Model (SVPM). In this model, people want to protect their sacred values from being corrupted by secular values. They found that people feel severe distress when they are asked to measure sacred values on a secular metric (e.g being asked how much money one is willing to accept for one’s child). This type of tradeoff, mixing the sacred with the secular, is known as a taboo tradeoff. However, Tetlock et al (2000) also found that if tradeoffs occur within the same domain, such as a sacred value for another sacred value, these types of tradeoffs are less offensive. Tradeoffs within the sacred sphere are knows as tragic or symbolic. Sacred values can also be a motivating factor between the persistence of conflict between religious or ethnic groups. Ginges, Atran, Medin and Shikaki (2007) extended the research on the SVPM to understanding the Israeli- Palestinian dispute which is often discussed in sacred terms, e.g. a fight to protect the holy land (Dumper, 2002). Ginges et al (2007) presented three types of peace deals to members of Hamas, Palestinian refugees, and Jewish Israeli settlers to assess whether sacred values caused participants to be non- utilitarian in a field experiment. This type of experiment allowed the SVPM to be applied to a real political dispute, with participants who dealt with the repercussions of this dispute on a daily level. In addition, peace deals were constructed as to be extremely realistic, using some of the same solutions, e.g., a two-state solution, which have been proposed as permanents solutions to the dispute by international agencies. The three types of tradeoff deals in this study were taboo, taboo + and tragic (symbolic). In the taboo deal, a two state solution was presented, the taboo + deal included the two- state solution and offered money in addition to this solution and the tragic deal offered the two state solution but a symbolic concession (an apology or recognition of a sacred right) in exchange. The researchers found that the taboo+ deals were more offensive to participants than the taboo+ deals but only to the participants for whom this issue was sacred (deemed moral absolutists by the authors). Non-moral absolutists showed exactly the reverse pattern and were less offended by taboo+ deals than the basic taboo deals. In deals where a symbolic concession was offered, moral absolutists were less offended than when the basic taboo deal was offered whereas no-moral absolutists were more disapproving of a tragic than a taboo tradeoff. Ginges et al’s (2007) work shows that the SVPM can be used in real world situations to facilitate cultural understanding. For example, an outsider brought in to help heal the conflict might be insensitive to the sacred nature of a particular issue by proposing what to him/her seems to be an adequate compromise. But, as noted in the above work, moral and non-moral absolutists have vastly different 3111