PsychologicalDUAL-USE

Reactive Devaluation

What it is

The tendency to rate a proposal as less attractive simply because it came from an adversary or counterpart — the same terms are devalued when the other side offers them.

How it works

Lee Ross and Constance Stillinger (1991) identified reactive devaluation while studying why obviously reasonable settlements fail. In one study, Stanford students evaluated a partial plan for university divestment from apartheid South Africa; when the same plan was described as the one the university had adopted, they rated it less favorably and the rejected alternative more favorably. In another, a nuclear-arms reduction proposal was rated far more favorable to the United States when attributed to Ronald Reagan than when the identical text was attributed to Mikhail Gorbachev. Three things drive the effect: the inference that an adversary would not offer something unless it favored them; the loss of an option's appeal once it becomes attainable; and the plain distaste of agreeing with an opponent. The effect is a standing obstacle in negotiation and a tool for spoilers. Anyone who wants a deal to fail need only label it the other side's idea; anyone who wants an idea adopted routes it through a mediator, a neutral commission, or a leak, so that it arrives without a fingerprint. Politically the pattern is nonpartisan: policies change value when their sponsor changes.

Real-world examples

  • •Ross and Stillinger (1991): an identical arms-reduction proposal was judged favorable to the United States when attributed to Ronald Reagan, unfavorable when attributed to Mikhail Gorbachev, and in between when attributed to unnamed third-party analysts.
  • •In the 1985 Stanford divestment dispute, students who had rated a partial-divestment plan moderately well downgraded it once the university adopted it and upgraded the more aggressive plan the university had rejected — the concession lost value at the moment it was granted.
  • •The individual health-insurance mandate originated in a 1989 Heritage Foundation proposal and was enacted in Massachusetts under Mitt Romney in 2006; once Democrats adopted it in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, most Republican officials opposed it. In the autumn of 2020 several Democratic officials, including Kamala Harris and Andrew Cuomo, voiced distrust of any COVID-19 vaccine authorized on the Trump administration's timetable; after January 2021 the same vaccines were the centerpiece of the new administration's public-health message.
  • •A widely reported CNBC poll in 2013 found more Americans opposed “Obamacare” than opposed “the Affordable Care Act”, although they are the same law; the sponsor's name did the devaluing.
  • •The single-text procedure used by American mediators at Camp David in 1978 had a neutral party author successive drafts so that neither Egypt nor Israel had to accept a proposal carrying the other's name; practitioners knew the effect before psychologists measured it.
  • •In custody mediation, a parent will reject a schedule proposed by the other parent and accept the identical schedule when the mediator proposes it; mediators learn to present terms as their own suggestion.

Ethical guidelines

Where the line is

Weighing a proposal by what you know of its author's track record is legitimate judgment; the line is crossed when a proposal is rejected because of its sponsor rather than its terms, or when a persuader deliberately attaches or conceals a sponsor so that the audience misjudges the terms.

  • ●Evaluate proposals on their terms; if you would accept the terms from a neutral party, accepting them from an adversary costs you nothing but pride.
  • ●Using a mediator or a neutral text so that a good proposal can be evaluated fairly is legitimate; leaking or laundering a proposal to disguise a bad one is not.
  • ●Do not defeat a proposal by attaching an opponent's name to it; if the terms are bad, argue the terms.
  • ●When your side changes its position on a policy after the sponsor changes, say so plainly rather than inventing a substantive reason.

How to defend against it

  • ►Strip the source: write down the terms of the proposal without who made it and rate them; then compare that rating with your reaction once the source is revealed. The gap is the devaluation.
  • ►Ask the swap question — “if my side had proposed exactly this, would I take it?” — and treat a yes as a yes.
  • ►Watch for your own change of position when a policy changes sponsor; consistency across sponsors is the check.
  • ►In a negotiation, ask for a neutral or a single text if you notice the other side rejecting terms they earlier sought; the problem may be the label, not the terms.
  • ►Distinguish a genuine reason to distrust an offer — a track record of bad faith — from the bare fact of who is offering; only the first is evidence.

From the Defense Playbook

Steelman Before Refutingminutes

Restate the other side's position in its strongest form, to their satisfaction, before you answer it, so that you respond to the actual argument rather than to the caricature a persuader or your own side handed you.

Self-Affirmation Before Threatening Informationminutes

Spend a few minutes writing about a value that matters to you and is unrelated to the topic before reading evidence that threatens your identity or your group, which lowers the defensiveness that otherwise makes you reject accurate information.

Moral Reframingtakes practice

When you argue across a political or cultural divide, make your honest case in terms of the values the listener actually holds, not your own, because arguments grounded in the other side's moral vocabulary are heard as arguments while those grounded in yours are heard as noise.

Perspective-Getting, Not Perspective-Takingminutes

To understand what another person thinks or wants, ask them and listen, instead of imagining yourself in their shoes; imagining feels insightful but in controlled tests does not improve accuracy, while asking does.

Every playbook entry states how strong its evidence is and when not to use it. Browse the full playbook.

References

  1. Ross, L., & Stillinger, C. (1991). Barriers to conflict resolution. Negotiation Journal, 7(4), 389-404
    The founding statement of reactive devaluation and the Reagan-Gorbachev and Stanford divestment findings.
  2. Ross, L. (1995). Reactive devaluation in negotiation and conflict resolution. In K. J. Arrow, R. H. Mnookin, L. Ross, A. Tversky, & R. B. Wilson (Eds.), Barriers to Conflict Resolution (pp. 26-42). W. W. Norton
    The three proposed mechanisms and the account of the divestment studies.
  3. Maoz, I., Ward, A., Katz, M., & Ross, L. (2002). Reactive devaluation of an “Israeli” vs. “Palestinian” peace proposal. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46(4), 515-546
    Replication of the effect with real peace proposals and partisans on both sides.
  4. Fisher, R., & Ury, W. (1981). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Houghton Mifflin
    The one-text procedure and its use at Camp David.
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