The Costs of Conviction: An interview + book giveaway with Steven Sloman

Issue 177: Steven Sloman's new book on the Costs of Conviction explains how sacred values can lead us astray in decision-making

When you are faced with a decision, do you focus on obtaining the best outcome or on which actions are socially and morally appropriate?

Steven Sloman’s new book, The Cost of Conviction: How our Deepest Values Lead us Astray compares these two primary strategies for making decisions: evaluating outcomes or sacred values. Steven is a professor of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences at Brown University and his research focuses on how people think, reason, make decisions, and form attitudes and beliefs. He has also been Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cognition, and author of Causal Models: How People Think about the World and Its Alternatives.

Drawing on his research, Steven argues that, while both outcomes and beliefs are helpful tools for a good decision maker, people lean on their sacred values more often than they should. In this interview, he explains how shared sacred values are also what lead societies down rabbit holes that can fuel anger and division, and lead to larger-scale ca…