(This one’s a little long, but it’s the first of a few on this topic, so hang in there…)
In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of a rider on the back of an elephant to describe the relationship between our logical/rational selves and our intuitive/subconscious selves. Haidt says the rider (I can’t help picturing a little guy in a pith helmet with a riding crop) is our reasoning self. This is where we list pros and cons, weigh evidence, and pursue logical decisions. The elephant is our intuition. It’s our subconscious, if you will, the part we consider emotional and think we should keep hidden from others. Obviously, when the rider and elephant are in agreement, they wander where the rider guides them. But when they disagree, the elephant is the one making the decisions. There just isn’t much a little guy with a riding crop can do to steer a determined elephant.
Some have gone so far as to argue the main job of our conscious mind (the rider) is to make sense of what the unconscious mind (the elephant) does, suggesting, “The conscious mind writes the autobiography of our species. Unaware of what is going on deep down inside, the conscious mind assigns itself the starring role…” (Haidt) Of course it does. That’s only logical.
All this begs the question, just how rational am I? I might think I’m the most logical person who's ever eaten Cheerios, making all my decisions based on the soundest of evidence. But Haidt’s metaphor gives me pause. For instance, what evidence am I considering and what information counts as “important” to me when I’m making my “logical” choices? It’s been argued we're capable of processing roughly 11 million bits of information per second, yet our conscious mind attends to only about 40 bits per second. That says a whole lot is going on that we’re not processing consciously. (Want proof? Right now, what’s in your peripheral vision? What do your clothes feel like on your skin? What taste is in your mouth? What’s your breathing sound like? All of this and far more is going on all the time, but do we notice?)
So many things tell us we aren’t working from a full storehouse of information that's being logically processed as we make our "obviously correct" choices. From driving recklessly when we know it can kill us to choosing life-long relational partners after just a few days of infatuation to treating people we love with rudeness under the ridiculous assumption they’ll still love us even if we’re jackasses... And on I could go with endless examples of us acting anything but logically. Yet we still cling to the belief that it’s other people who aren’t logical, not me. No. I’m Mr. Logic Person, the great superhero of economists and philosophy departments everywhere.
Am I really?
I raise this topic because I keep hearing people (their tone often oozing with contempt) accuse others of being irrational. “My logic is correct; you’re an emotional idiot driven entirely by fear.” I hear this in the news, in politics (on all sides), in response to advertising or social media, and even in my own head.
For ALL of us, envisioning the rider and the elephant at work in our minds can be incredibly useful as we reconsider the way we operate in the world. For instance:
= We’re all pretty easy to “nudge,” as Thaler and Sunstein wrote some years ago. It’s far easier than we'd like to believe to ping our subconscious with the wording of a question, the order of food on a buffet, or an emotional appeal we agree with (or despise). We’re persuaded by the littlest of things we may not even notice. And this goes both ways. When we're trying to persuade others, our best chances of success come when we appeal to their elephants. Their riders are more likely to go along once their elephants are on our side;
= Our system of education and most professional training programs are primarily designed to educate the rider, with far too little attention paid to the elephant. When the budget is tight, we cut art not math. We eliminate creativity in favor of correct answers. We assign research articles rather than short stories. We teach students logical reasoning, leaving out the often irrational processes involved in even just weighing pieces of evidence. (“I believe that celebrity because he’s good-looking and seems nice. I don’t believe that politician because all politicians lie…”) And along the way, we teach kids their insights and intuitions should become irrelevant in their lives as they "mature," even convincing them their elephant is “bad,” when really, educating the elephant is central to living well.
Okay, so this isn’t a (long, dull) post heralding the end of logic, saying “all scientists are liars,” or trying to put math teachers out of work. Instead, it’s a reminder about who and what we are, and of how powerful our insight, intuition, and emotion can be. This isn’t true just for “those people,” the weak-minded, illogical fools; it’s for all of us. “Common sense” isn’t always so common. Finding ways to educate both the rider and the elephant should be part of education at every level. We already dedicate considerable time and energy to educating the rider. The elephant not as much. For each of us, exploring in depth our values, shaping our understanding of emotion, finding ways to cultivate our creative sides, and paying attention to the ways our “reasons” are influenced by things that are anything but logical can all be helpful in educating the elephant. Shaping our environment (our “path” as the latest iterations of this metaphor call it) is also useful. The people and things in the world around us are influential in ways we rarely see or understand.
More on this soon, when I promise to talk about whether my wife has or has not said anything worth listening to lately. (So it'll be a post wherein I just might get hit on the head!)