Jon Haidt, UVA, & Positive Psychology

I'm adding Jon Haidt's new book, The Happiness Hypothesis, to my book log.  It is excellent.  Much of it was assigned for the MAPP session this weekend, and I'm reading the rest out of interest.  He's a great writer and was even better as a teacher.  If you know any current Wahoos, encourage them to take Jon's class.

Dr. Haidt introduces an extraordinarily useful metaphor throughout the book that captures a significant recurring theme in what we have been studying.  The metaphor is of a rider on an elephant.  The theme is that we have mental processes (often associated with brain systems) that we experience as intuitive or non-rational.  They are fast, parallel, virtually effortless and almost entirely automatic.  They are the elephant.  Then there is conscious, rational thought -- the rider.  The elephant has been evolving for far longer and is much smoother and more powerful.  The rider is newer and often functions to serve the elephant, rather than to guide it.  The rider cannot stop the elephant once it engages and can only guide it where it is willing to go.  But, over time and with attention and effort, the rider can train the elephant, and the resultant teamwork can be astonishing.

Some examples of the elephant at work:

• Approach/avoidance - the like-o-meter is registering all the time and it has no need for reasoned input, we just know
• Negativity bias -- we are far more attuned to threats than to opportunities.  Missing a single opportunity was not usually fatal, missing just one threat usually was.  So, we evolved with exquisite sensitivity to the negative
• Reciprocity -- we play tit for tat naturally and well.  See also, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Cialdini.
• Haidt argues from his research that much of our moral judgment-making is handled by the elephant, though shaped in its expression and, to some extent, the domains on which it draws by culture.

Here's a passage on the elephant and the rider:

The automatic system was shaped by natural selection to trigger quick and reliable action, and it includes parts of the brain that make us feel pleasure and pain (such as the orbitofrontal cortex), and that trigger survival-related motivations (such as the hypothalamus). The automatic system has its finger on the dopamine release button. The controlled system, in contrast, is better seen as an advisor. It’s a rider placed on the elephant’s back to help the elephant make better choices. The rider can see farther into the future, and the rider can learn valuable information by talking to other riders or by reading maps, but the rider can not order the elephant around against its will. I believe the Scottish philosopher David Hume was closer to the truth than was Plato when he said, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."