When consensus can change hearts and minds: Sacred values and edge cases

Consensus information can change people's minds, especially in ambiguous situations. But can it also change people's hearts by influencing their deeply held convictions? The literature asserts not because sacralized values are assumed to be immune to social influence. Five studies (N = 1,651) demonstrate important limits to this assumption-when facing decisions involve edge cases in which sacred boundaries are ambiguous, sacralizers are responsive to consensus information. Halal-observant Muslims ignored consensus information when it challenged their sacred value in a core case (i.e., eating pork) but aligned with the consensus in an edge case (i.e., eating food that had touched pork; Study 1). Pro-choice sacralizers resisted consensus information in a core case (i.e., deciding to vote against elective abortions at 5 weeks of pregnancy) but aligned with consensus in an edge case (i.e., deciding to vote against elective abortions at 25 weeks of pregnancy; Study 2). We identified decision-making ambiguity as an underlying mechanism, such that people experienced more ambiguity in edge cases, which increased their reliance on consensus (Study 3). The degree of sacralization moderated consensus effects: In an edge case (i.e., using vaccines derived from fetal cells), the more strongly participants sacralized pro-life abortion values, the more they were influenced by the consensus (Study 4). The effect of consensus extended to behavior: when faced with an edge-case decision (i.e., donating to fetal-cell research), pro-life sacralizers were more likely to donate when consensus supported donation (Study 5). Edge cases reveal that consensus can move both minds and hearts by shifting judgments and behavior at the boundaries of convictions long assumed to be nonnegotiable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).