The first moral psychological principle Jonathan Haidt introduces in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is “Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant (intuition) and its rider (reasoning) to explain the principle.
Intuition
Haidt explains the elephant is the human’s subconscious and is responsible for
- transforming sensory input into some kind of pattern
- generating an intuitive recognition of who or what the perceived pattern is
- having an emotional reaction to what is perceived (move toward, move away, ignore)
Haidt provides evidence that decisions, including moral decisions, are made at the subconscious, emotional level and are based on the intuitive perception of what the sensory information means. He also makes the argument that making these decisions is an evolutionary adaptation. Since there’s a biological evolutionary advantage for prey, such as early human beings, to avoid being eaten by predators, prey animals are more likely to perceive danger when there is none. The humans who didn’t respond to twigs breaking in the distance and shapes moving toward them from that direction, didn’t last long enough to pass their genes on to us.
What each person, however, perceives as friendly, dangerous, or something that can be safely ignored is not only based on genes, but also on that person’s beliefs about and experiences of the thing perceived. Those beliefs and experiences are a filter that cause people to intuitively feel and react differently to the same sensory input.
Take a moment to identify what your feeling now? Calm? Doubtful? Curious? Something else?
Once you’ve identified what you’re feeling. Click the link for each photo below. Try to be aware of your emotional response and how mild or intense the feeling is before you click the next link.
How did you react to each photo? Did you feel yourself intrigued, afraid, excited, or bored? Did you feel yourself emotionally or even physically move away from one or more of the pictures?
Try doing the same thing with the images below.
Did you feel your emotional responses? Did you feel yourself emotionally moving toward (liking) or moving away from (disliking) what you saw?
Patterns don’t have to be visual. Think about how smells or tastes can bring back pleasurable or painful memories. How sounds can be soothing or jarring. Once I walked into an office reception area and heard a jarring barrage of noise from a radio. After a few seconds, however, the noise became a pattern of musical notes, and I recognized the radio was playing a song I enjoyed. Once I recognized the pattern, I switched from wanting the radio off to wanting it louder. At first my subconscious elephant couldn’t make sense of the noise and wanted it to go away. Once it recognized the pattern and remembered enjoying the song in the past, it wanted to hear more of it.
Patterns and the meanings they evoke can be complex, layered, even contradictory. Those meanings can also change or become more entrenched depending on later experiences.
My main points here are that each person can receive the same sensory input, recognize different patterns, and draw different meanings from that input. Consequently, people can react in very different ways to the same sensory input. Those reactions can be bewildering to others and even to themselves. I try to remember when I’m baffled by another’s response to something, they are likely just as baffled by my response.
Reasoning
The rider is the human’s conscious mind, and its job–if needed–is to explain the response, i.e., the beliefs and/or actions arising from that emotional reaction, to other people in a way the rider thinks will make the response seem reasonable. Since no one wants to look bad, the rider will explain the response in as strategic a way as possible, so that the person looks good to whomever they’re interacting with. Consequently, when pressed to explain our beliefs and actions to others, our conscious mind goes through this two-step process:
- Conscious perception of what the elephant is feeling
- Reasoning how to explain that feeling so the response appears logical and is accepted by others
What we say to make our perception seem reasonable to others is based on our beliefs, and what we assume are the beliefs others have. Haidt makes the point that what we say to make ourselves appear good to others may not be based on reality. It is, however, what we think is real, or what we think others think is real in that moment.
Somewhere in my past, I heard or read the story of an alcoholic medical doctor. He knew his liquor was causing painful ulcers in his stomach. Rather than stop drinking, however, he began adding milk to his drinks to calm his stomach. That irrational response made perfect sense to him. In his warped, addict-mind-thinking, it was a logical response that made him appear reasonable–at least to himself. He couldn’t accept that the milk wasn’t healing the ulcers. Despite his advanced knowledge of human biology, and his own personal physical pain, his addictive thinking changed his perception of reality. I sometimes wonder whether reality broke through the illusion he’d created to enable him to continue drinking, and he recovered from his addiction, or reality broke through by killing him.
As a recovering addict and student of psychology, I’ve had to look through my past and confront the times I lost touch with reality and created an alternate “reality” that enabled me to continue in my addiction. I often say the greatest gift of my addiction is that I learned how well I and other human beings lie to ourselves and others. We believe what we believe is true, even when it’s clear to others we’re insane. One of the gifts of recovery is that by examining my thinking and behavior–with the help of others–I’ve been able to change my perspective. By changing my vantage point, I can now see and accept that what I thought was logical, kind-hearted thinking and behavior was actually illogical and harmful. When Haidt talks about our rider using reasoning to make ourselves look good to others, I recognize and understand that at a deep, visceral level.
Most people do a pretty good job of explaining themselves to others–so long as the people they’re justifying themselves to share the same beliefs. Two people with the same background and feeling the elephant’s trunk will quite likely agree the trunk is a snake. But what if one person comes from a different background and doesn’t know about snakes? Or what if two people with the same background are feeling different parts of the elephant?
Those are questions I’ve often mused about. In this blog I’ll share those musings.