Reactive devaluation is a cognitive bias that causes people to devalue things that are offered to them, especially if offered by someone they perceive negatively. For example, reactive devaluation can cause someone to wrongly dismiss a good business proposal as bad, just because they dislike the person who offered it.
Reactive devaluation is a common and problematic phenomenon, so it’s important to understand it. As such, in the following article you will learn more about reactive devaluation, and see what you can do about it in practice.
Examples of reactive devaluation
An example of reactive devaluation in legal or trade negotiations is a person who rejects an offer that was better than they initially hoped for, because now that they received it they no longer find it appealing.
Another example of reactive devaluation is that, during conflict resolution, one party may reject a proposal if it’s made by an opposing party, but would have accepted the same proposal if it was made by a neutral third party. Similarly, the person experiencing reactive devaluation in this case might have also embraced the proposal if they were the ones who came up with it, if they had brainstormed it jointly with the opposing party, or if it was presented to them as a hypothetical idea.
Many key examples of reactive devaluation come from political contexts. For instance, one example of this by researcher Lee Ross is a 1986 survey that asked people in the USA for their opinion on a proposal for nuclear disarmament by the USA and USSR. When the proposal was attributed to the US President (Ronald Reagan), 90% of respondents believed it was favorable to the USA or evenhanded, and 80% believed the same when it was attributed to a neutral third party. However, when the same proposal was attributed to the Soviet leader (Mikhail Gorbachev), only 44% of the respondents expressed this type of positive reaction.
Another example of reactive devaluation in politics was a controversy at Stanford University about divesting investments in South Africa as a response to the apartheid; students generally favored a policy supporting divestments, whereas the university favored a more cautious financial approach. In a survey where students were shown two proposals on this, they generally rated whichever of these proposals they were told the university offered as a less significant compromise than the proposal they were told the university didn’t offer. For instance, for one divestment proposal, only 40% thought it was the bigger compromise when it supposedly came from the university, compared to 85% when it supposedly didn’t come from the university.
Reactive devaluation also played a role in other political contexts, for instance when it comes to the perception of peace proposals and other agreements related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Finally, examples of reactive devaluation appear in many other domains, such as academia, consumer decisions, and climate policy. For instance, in business decisions, an executive may disparage a proposal if it comes from an employee rather than from themselves, or if it comes from an employee they dislike rather than one that they favor.
Forms of reactive devaluation
It’s possible to distinguish between two main forms of reactive devaluation, which can co-occur and have a cumulative effect:
- A proposal is devalued because it’s made by someone who is perceived negatively.
- A proposal is devalued because it’s made, regardless of who made it.
In addition, reactive devaluation can influence various types of entities, such as individuals and groups, and can apply to various things like proposals, such as suggestions and ideas. It can also lead to various cognitive and behavioral outcomes, such as thinking less of a proposal, speaking against it, or rejecting it directly.
Dangers of reactive devaluation
The key danger of reactive devaluation is that it can cause you to think and act in an irrational way, that’s against your best interests, often out of spite. For example, it can cause you to reject a proposal that’s good for you, even if this means that you won’t get a better offer. This behavior can also serve as a psychological barrier to conflict resolution, and potentially cause a complete breakdown of negotiations, and a vicious cycle of conflict escalation, for instance if each party is insulted by the other’s behavior.
In addition, reactive devaluation can cause various other issues in the long term, particularly from a social perspective. For example, it can cause people to have a bad perception of you (e.g., as an unskilled negotiator), or it can cause people to avoid wanting to work with you (e.g., if they consider you unreasonable).
However, an important caveat is that reactive devaluation doesn’t necessarily lead to these issues. Notably, if it only influences people’s thoughts, but they’re able to overcome it and avoid letting it dictate their statements and actions, then it might not have a substantial influence on their behavior. For example, if reactive devaluation causes you to automatically dislike a good offer made to you by an antagonist, this won’t necessarily be an issue if you’re able to overcome your initial instinct and accept the offer graciously.
Psychology and causes of reactive devaluation
Reactive devaluation is attributed to two main types of cognitive mechanisms:
- Changes in perception, interpretation, or inference. This means that the proposal (or specific aspects of it) are seen as more negative than they really are. For example, this can happen if the proposal is made by an unpleasant person, and this causes the proposal to appear unpleasant by association (a phenomenon related to the halo effect). This can also happen if a proposal is made by a hated adversary, leading you to evaluate it with the goal of confirming that it’s bad, which can lead to issues such as prioritizing trivial aspects of the proposal while ignoring more important ones.
- Changes in preferences. This means that the outcome associated with the proposal becomes less desirable than it was before the proposal was made. For example, this can occur due to an inherent tendency to devalue and reject things that are available to us, and to instead desire things that are unavailable (a phenomenon captured by aphorisms such as “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”). This can play a role even if the person who made the proposal isn’t perceived negatively by the person who is assessing the proposal.
In addition, other mechanisms can cause people to engage in reactive devaluation, including:
- Loss aversion, when the desire to avoid a loss is irrationally greater than the desire to achieve a proportional gain, so focusing on things that are lost as part of a proposal leads to a negative reaction. This relates to concession aversion, whereby people in a negotiation asymmetrically perceive concessions that they make (i.e., things they lose) as greater than equivalent concessions that others make (i.e., things that they themselves gain).
- Zero-sum thinking, for example when people assume that negotiations are necessarily “us vs. them” situations, and any gains for their opponent must come directly at their own expense. This is particularly the case when intergroup bias is involved, because the person you’re negotiating with is perceived as part of your social outgroup.
- Polarizing effect of mere attention, for example when thinking about a proposal amplifies its initial negative valence. This phenomenon is also known as heightened scrutiny and attitude polarization.
- Interpersonal considerations, for example if people react negatively to a proposal, which causes others who are on their side to also react negatively, due to the bandwagon effect.
A person’s reactive devaluation can be caused by a combination of these mechanisms. Which mechanisms influence them and how they do so depends on various factors, such as who the person is, who made the proposal, what type of proposal it is, and in what environment and context the proposal is being assessed. These factors can also influence whether, how, and to what degree people engage in reactive devaluation.
Associated phenomena
Various phenomena often co-occur with reactive devaluation, and can sometimes exacerbate it.
This includes psychological phenomena like the fundamental attribution error, cherry picking, and jumping to conclusions. This also includes the bias blind spot, the illusion of objectivity, and naïve realism, a group of related phenomena that make people overestimate their rationality, compared to that of others they’re interacting with, and can therefore prompt reactive devaluation.
In addition, from a philosophical perspective, related phenomena include the genetic fallacy and ad hominem arguments. They occur, for example, when someone argues that a proposal is worthless because it comes from someone perceived as an enemy.
Rational devaluation
Reactive devaluation is generally viewed as an irrational phenomenon. However, there are also rational reasons why a proposal may be devalued, such as:
- The person making it is unreliable or dishonest, so you don’t trust them to follow through on it, or you assume that it has some concealed aspects (e.g., omissions, ambiguities, or “fine print”) that would cause issues.
- There is something suspicious about the fact that the party in question was willing to make the offer, such as that they might have private information that you don’t have.
- The act of making the proposal led to a change in your aspirations or comparison levels, for example by making you realize that the person who made the proposal is more willing to compromise than you thought.
- Accepting the proposal would cause you to be perceived negatively by others, for example because it would make it appear as if you’ve given up on your principles under pressure.
How to deal with reactive devaluation
You can use a combination of the following techniques to reduce your reactive devaluation and its impact, and to avoid or respond to its displays by others:
- Focus on the proposal, rather than the party who made it. For example, write down the proposal without any indication as to who made it, and use the result to evaluate the proposal’s quality. You can also extend this approach in various ways, such as having people submit proposals anonymously, so you can assess the proposals before you know who they’re from. However, you should still make sure to consider relevant information about the people who made the proposal, for instance if they’re dishonest or stand to gain from misleading you.
- Pretend that someone else made that proposal. For example, if you’re instinctively devaluing a proposal from an antagonist, visualize a situation where a neutral mediator made the same proposal, and ask yourself how you would respond to it then.
- Focus on the benefits of the proposal. For example, you can focus on the fact that the proposal allows you to achieve all your original objectives. You can also focus on the benefits of not giving in to reactive devaluation, such as that you’ll do what’s better for you, and demonstrate your willingness to be the bigger person and rise above previous disagreements.
- Consider the downsides of reactive devaluation. For example, you can remind yourself that by engaging in reactive devaluation you might harm your own progress and make your peers think less of you.
- Reflect on your thinking. For example, ask yourself if it’s possible that your assessment of a proposal is based on reactive devaluation, rather than the true qualities of that proposal.
- Focus on controlling your actions. For example, even if you can’t stop hating the idea of accepting an opponent’s proposal, remind yourself that you can still control your actions, and choose to act in the way that will lead to the best outcome for you.
- Determine goals in advance. For example, if you’re about to negotiate with someone you hate, decide in advance exactly what you hope to gain. It can be particularly useful to precommit to those goals, for example by writing them in a document or sharing them with someone you trust, to help avoid moving the goalposts later. This can also be done mutually, using prior elicitation, which involves asking the parties in the negotiation to state what their goals are and how important each is. This also ties to other techniques, such as concession menus, which involve one side in the negotiation offering a set of unilateral concessions that they’re willing to make. Such a gesture could be followed by inviting the other side to select a “pump-priming” concession of their choice, to initiate a cycle of reciprocal concessions.
- Resolve underlying issues. For example, you can try to resolve anger that you have toward someone before you begin negotiating with them. Similarly, if someone might reactively devalue a proposal due to issues such as low self-confidence, embarrassment, or ego, consider if you can present your proposal in a way that avoids that. You can also do other things, such as demonstrating honesty by inviting the other party to ask you questions (e.g., why you’re making the offer now), and demonstrating accountability by committing to deadlines that are enforced by an external party.
- Minimize engagement with problem topics. For example, during a negotiation, you can avoid discussing a controversial issue that’s unrelated to the proposal at hand and that’s likely to trigger a negative emotional reaction.
- Consider the timing. For example, if there has just been a serious argument between you and the person you’re planning to make a proposal to, then it might be best to wait a bit before making the proposal, to allow both of you to cool off.
- Use a third party. For example, instead of communicating with an opponent directly, you can communicate with them through a neutral mediator.
- Use other debiasing techniques. For example, you can consider what advice you would give to a friend if they were in your situation, or ask the other party in a negotiation to do the same. You can use relevant philosophical principles to help with this, for instance, by telling yourself that you shouldn’t reject someone else’s proposal just because you dislike them, if you don’t want others to do the same to you.
Accounting for reactive devaluation can also help you understand and predict people’s behavior—including your own—even when you’re not trying to avoid this phenomenon directly. For example, it can help you predict that a gesture of goodwill, which is meant to prompt reciprocation, might be dismissed as trivial, or treated with suspicion and hostility. However, it’s also important to avoid imagining or exaggerating reactive devaluation displayed by others, since this phenomenon doesn’t always influence people’s thinking.
Summary and conclusions
- Reactive devaluation is a cognitive bias that causes people to devalue things that are offered to them, especially if offered by someone they perceive negatively.
- For example, reactive devaluation can cause someone to wrongly dismiss a good business proposal as bad, just because they dislike the person who offered it.
- Reactive devaluation can lead to rejection of valuable offers, breakdown of negotiations, and serious social conflicts.
- To reduce reactive devaluation, you can focus on the proposal (rather than the party who made it), pretend that someone else made the proposal, and highlight the benefits of the proposal alongside the downsides of devaluing it reactively.
- You can also reduce reactive devaluation in other ways, including when making offers to others, by using techniques like going through a third-party mediator or explicitly listing the goals of both sides in advance.