The Elephant and the Rider - Jonathan Haidt's Positive Psychology

[uumlau]

I've been reading a pair of books by Jonathan Haidt:

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom: Jonathan Haidt: 9780465028023: Amazon.com: Books
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: Jonathan Haidt: 9780307455772: Amazon.com: Books

Jonathan Haidt is an academic and experimental psychologist at the University of Virginia who works in the field of "positive psychology". Positive psychology is the study of the human mind in those cases where nothing is especially wrong: no psychoses, no overwhelming anxiety, no need for intense therapy, no need to "fix" anything. Interestingly, Jung and in particular his work psychological types is an example of positive psychology, but ever since Freud's and Jung's works were mostly rejected by academia in an effort to make psychology more scientific, psychology has largely focused on what goes wrong with the mind and has tended to assume a common understanding of how the human mind works normally.

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt presents an interesting picture of the human mind. The human mind is divided, and not in just only one way. It is split between mind and body, between new and old, between controlled and automatic. It is even split between conscious mind, the limbic system (emotions), and gut (the autonomous systems directly dealing with maintaining metabolism) - the Enneagram's mystical theory doesn't seem to be too far off from reality in this case.

There are lots of different ways we can categorize how the mind is split, and along with the ways that align with Enneagram typology, there are all the Jungian perspectives as well, where there is definitely a conscious mind and an unconscious mind.

Haidt introduces his own analogy of the mind, the one he has found most useful for explaining/studying the kinds of things he has found. A classical version of this analogy would be reason vs passion, where you have a charioteer (reason) constraining and directing horses (passion), and the ideal of this classical analogy is the ultimate superiority of reason, where reason brings one closer to the gods, and passion brings one closer to the animals.

Haidt believes that while the metaphor is apt, the idealization is not. Ultimately, reason is NOT in control of the passions. A better analogy is an elephant with a rider.

The elephant isn't stupid. It's very smart. It is very, very good at doing elephant things, and it has a huge "library of routines" that not only take care of eating/sleeping/breathing, but also handle complex things like relating to other elephants (humans, actually). The elephant has only two limitations. For one, it is rather short-sighted. Only the present moment and the last few moments really matter to it. Its other limitation is that it cannot speak. It has no words for what it has to say. It can think and feel and observe and react, but conscious communication is beyond it.

The rider is also very smart, and it is extremely good at doing a lot of things that the elephant is bad at. It is very far-sighted. The rider can see how the past affects the present, how the present affects the future, and how that which is nearby affects things far away, and how things far away can affect us right here. It can also talk. Talking is very useful for talking with other "riders", who also know how to talk. Moreover, the rider can use logic and reason, write books, contribute to the total knowledge of humanity and so on. There is one critical thing that the rider CANNOT DO, however.

The rider cannot "control" the elephant.

If you can imagine an actual elephant and rider for a moment, the rider isn't pushing or otherwise forcing the elephant to do anything. The elephant does what it does on its own. The rider can direct the elephant, and the elephant might comply. The rider can train the elephant to react in particular ways, and so on.

The rider and elephant can be mostly in sync, where each understands the other and they accomplish things together that neither could alone.

The rider and elephant can be very out of sync, where the rider has one idea and the elephant has quite a different idea. This is why it is easy to decide to go on a diet (the rider's choice), and so easy to eat too much in spite of that (the elephant's choice).

This dimorphism of the human mind can be used to understand a lot of "normal" psychology. Why perfectly reasonable people can do unreasonable things. Why some people seem to have it all together and others don't. How we can have huge blind spots and be complete hypocrites. Why it's so hard to change habits.

I think this dimorphism imperfectly maps to Jungian functions. (Keep in mind I'm bastardizing the functions by doing this mapping at all, this isn't typology so much as a way to take your understanding of typology and apply it to this perspective.) In particular I think the elephant represents the unconscious mind directly: all of those thoughts and feelings that we KNOW and UNDERSTAND, but we can't figure out how to say. The rider does his/her best at translating these things, but the rider isn't the elephant, and the translation is lossy. Therefore, I would say that the rider is represented by the Extroverted functions: the functions that indicate how you interact with the world. Conversely, the elephant is represented by the introverted functions.

This mapping has some interesting consequences (remember this is a bastardization of functions, not classical function theory). The main implication is that Fi, Ti, Ni, Si are all tapping into the elephant's understanding of things. It is the elephant that has that innate understanding of logic for an IxTP. It is the elephant that has a broad and abstract intuition for Ni doms. And so on.

The elephant is NOT STUPID. The elephant is YOU. (More or less. )

The elephant represents a very significant (and perhaps the most significant) portion of your understanding of the world.

And the elephant mostly resides in your unconscious mind. How's that for a puzzle?

.......................................

I'll be posting more in this thread, gradually covering a lot of the material I've been reading of late. I have to say that these books really "clicked" for me. The models/analogies here make sense of a lot of things that didn't otherwise make sense, that you'd have to just shrug and accept something nonsensical as true.

Of course, the point of posting this is to generate discussion.

Have you read either of these books? If so, what do you think? Do you think my reading is off base?

If you haven't read these books, what do you think of the elephant/rider analogy? Do you see this pattern in your own life?

Future posts will expand on things like mental blind spots, hypocrisy, how you "train the elephant", how love and attachments work, how we react to adversity, and other topics. In the long run, this will turn into a discussion of the psychology of morality, where Haidt offers a very different vision of how morality is learned and understood than has been the case in modern scientific psychology, and eventually leading to a discussion of how this psychology of morality affects how politics and religion plays out (the topic of the second book). If you have any preferences for which topic(s) I cover first, let me know.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Interesting. Will follow.

 

[Mustafa]

So an NF is an elephant man in one? My mind is split between shortterm memory (unconscious) and longtime memory (conscious). And I am Asperger INFP.

Cool.

 

[Tilt]

OMG.... I did a research project on The Happiness Hypothesis. If you are interested in this topic, you should check out the concept of "the wise mind" in dialectical behavioral therapy. I will try to write more on it later.

 

[Tilt]

I've been reading a pair of books by Jonathan Haidt:

Jonathan Haidt is an academic and experimental psychologist at the University of Virginia who works in the field of "positive psychology". Positive psychology is the study of the human mind in those cases where nothing is especially wrong: no psychoses, no overwhelming anxiety, no need for intense therapy, no need to "fix" anything. Interestingly, Jung and in particular his work psychological types is an example of positive psychology, but ever since Freud's and Jung's works were mostly rejected by academia in an effort to make psychology more scientific, psychology has largely focused on what goes wrong with the mind and has tended to assume a common understanding of how the human mind works normally.

Furthermore, the subfield of "positive psychology" focuses on the strengths, virtues, and traits that help us to survive and thrive, and the process to getting there: happiness, resilience, hope, goal-setting, self-efficiency, self-actualization, etc. While traditional psychology tends to go for the "diagnose, treat, and fix" model, positive psychology likes to focus on tools, strengths, values in order to figure out solutions. It's used a lot in school settings, behavior change programs, and the workplace. There is not as big of a contrast between traditional psychology and positive psychology as it's made out to be. Motivational interviewing, acceptance commitment therapy, and CBT with mindfulness are some therapeutic modalities that would probably have overlap with positive psychology.

I really did like Haidt's analogy because it really helped me to reframe my thoughts and emotions. When I tried to be in control all the time in the rider role, I would engage in the "overintellectualization" defense mechanism and try to to rationalize my thoughts and emotions into neat little boxes. However, if you do that long enough, the elephant will eventually throw you into a pile of dung. Once you let the animal be, you can gently guide it and, you will tend to have a smoother ride.

 

[Mustafa]

Plato first said this idea of litterally of rider and horses and animal and gods world. Strangely, i first heard about PP from a philosopher. INTJ.

 

[uumlau]

Plato first said this idea of litterally of rider and horses and animal and gods world. Strangely, i first heard about PP from a philosopher. INTJ.

Yes, that's where the analogy comes from, in part, but no, it isn't "positive psychology" per se, but rather an analogy about reason vs passion, and Plato of course aspires to "reason". There are other philosophers, such as Hume, whose philosophy assumes that men are more about passions first, and reason comes after. Haidt indicates that he believes Hume is closer to the truth, psychologically speaking.

 

[meowington]

I can direct my elephant (Ni) for the most, but it just won't calm down. It only knows gallop.

 

[Mustafa]

I knew most of that, i am trying to talk scientifically like you guys. I. Like the wise mind theory.

Peace

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Yes, that's where the analogy comes from, in part, but no, it isn't "positive psychology" per se, but rather an analogy about reason vs passion, and Plato of course aspires to "reason". There are other philosophers, such as Hume, whose philosophy assumes that men are more about passions first, and reason comes after. Haidt indicates that he believes Hume is closer to the truth, psychologically speaking.

I've always subscribed to the theory that man was more subject to his passions than his reason. It's one of the reasons I believe that systems which assume the inherent rationality of man fail. It's also one of the fundamental limitations of reason.

This is why I find political theories convincing that begin from a place of understanding human nature and the limitations of our reason than I do enlightenment theories operating in a metaphysical vacuum where man is a fundamentally rational creature.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

One thing I have been working on is dumping the separation between I and self. I used to spend a lot of time in rider mode. I separated myself from emotions, ignored my own needs, ignored my own pain.

In effect, I had made the elephant vanish from my vision. But that meant I just wasn't aware of the elephant, not that the elephant didn't exist. It was still right there doing all the elephant things.....just not with the rider acknowledging it.

I have been quieting the rider a lot over the last year. Where I had nonstop running commentary in my brain, I now enjoy inner quiet and stillness.....

And I try not to separate myself as much.... I still have much to do on this. ...

Now I am working on merging the elephant and rider.

 

[uumlau]

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brains work so well that our reasoning can work at all. Plato's image of reason as charioteer controlling the dumb beasts of passion may overstate not only the wisdom but also the power of the charioteer. The metaphor of a rider on an elephant fits Damasio's findings more closely: Reason and emotion must both work together to create intelligent behavior, but emotion (a major part of the elephant) does most of the work. When the neocortex came along, it made the rider possible, but it made the elephant much smarter, too.

The reference to Damasio's findings has to do with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis

Essentially, Damasio's study of people with a particular kind of brain damage. The damage inhibited their ability to experience emotions, and consequently inhibited their ability to make decisions. In other words, in order to make decisions, you have to feel emotions. If you think you are making decisions entirely objectively, in the absence of emotion, you are wrong. There is always an underlying emotion. It's just easy to ignore that emotion, for example, if the emotion is comprised of liking "reasonable logic".

Thoughts?

 

[Tilt]

When I read that portion, it made me chuckle about the many young Ts who seem to pride themselves in being super logical and emotionally devoid and those who are just emotionally blocked. Ironically, both presentations stem from emotion, a desire to be seen in a certain light, rather than pure objectivity. This false objectivity seems to make people much more susceptible to biases, perception errors, and logical fallacies.

I think people often associate emotions with immediate, impulsive reactions to things when, in fact, emotions are just another set of data from our bodies and instincts. With access to and awareness of this information, you become more in control of the motivations behind your actions and reactions.

 

[Evo]

I am coming back to this when I can read through it more thoroughly thanks [MENTION=9310]uumlau[/MENTION]

 

[Eilonwy]

Got a hold of both books and will read them asap. Model sounds intriguing.

 

[uumlau]

Social vs Ultrasocial; Reciprocity

One of the interesting themes of the book is the concept of being "ultrasocial". As Haidt puts it, humans are "90% chimp and 10% bee".

Chimps and many other animals are social, even to the point of having relationships with each other that we would recognize as relationships. But that's just "social". Ultrasocial is something else that evolves completely independently. Humans are the only ultrasocial primate. What are other ultrasocial animals? Bees and ants.

Bees and ants do something that chimps don't do, even though chimps are clearly more advanced and more intelligent in many ways. Bees and ants cooperate on tasks, and can communicate with each other to accomplish those tasks, in spite of lacking the degree of intelligence that one might expect for a species to be able to communicate. You would never see a pair of chimps, however, cooperating on a task, such as one chimp pulling down a branch so that another chimp could easily grab the fruit off of it. They'll use a tool for their own purposes, yes, but the concept of cooperating just isn't there. That's why they don't talk. Yes, they can send signals, yes they can establish social relationships, but there is no impulse to come up with a language to relate impersonal concepts such as cooperation.

The chimp has no rider, only an elephant. Humans evolved a rider because being cooperative, being ultrasocial, is a huge evolutionary advantage. Individually, humans are kind of puny and not very adaptive, but as a society, as an ultrasocial animal, it has come to dominate the planet. Being ultrasocial similarly benefits bees and ants.

This has huge implications for what the rider has evolved to do. It has evolved to communicate with other humans; it has evolved to create and adapt to a society larger than itself. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt brings this up in terms of reciprocity.

Reciprocity, both positive and negative, is essential to human interaction and overall happiness. It is part of our morality, and is a universal foundation of the morality of many if not all human cultures: "The Golden Rule" The interesting thing here is that it is NOT a taught morality, apparently. It's built into human nature, the same way bees and ants are instinctively ultrasocial. We're hard-wired to be nice to those who are nice to us, and to be not so nice to those that are not nice to us. It creates a huge feedback mechanism that regulates society.

There are some interesting implications that arise from its being a built-in process. First of all, even if you think you are "above it all", no you aren't. You will always naturally resent people who mistreat you and - no matter how much you believe in loving your enemies or turning the other cheek - you will naturally tend to mistreat them in return. Likewise, it means that doing wrong by others - or even APPEARING to do wrong by others - will exact a heavy social cost. On the positive side, it means that generosity and benevolence will usually be rewarded, because others will instinctively reward it. It also weighs heavily in the concepts of condemnation of liars and cheats: people who promise reciprocity, but renege. I suspect it would also be fair to say that it has a lot to do with that cathartic feeling one gets when watching a movie and the protagonist beats up people who deserve to get beat up.

Yeah yeah, it gets way more complicated than that, but I'm trying to introduce the ideas in these books slowly. These were two books where I could maybe read 1/2 a chapter in a single sitting, because just reading that small amount would make me sit and think for a very long time.

 

[Poki]

I need more data, what you explained has conflicts within it as a whole. It has a shift in it that doesnt align. I have this issue, though in regard to seeing multiple pictures. It has been attributed to being middle brain as i can look at a single picture and it shifts in front of my eyes. Like the eyes say angry, the mouth says confused, the cheeks say happy. I can see these shifts as if the picture changes back and forth in front of my eyes. Your explanation does that to me. Like you are shifting shapes of your picture you paint.

I will go back over when i have more time.

 

[Poki]

I dont thin functions can be tied to subconcious or not. Closest i think we can get is MBTI types having certain functions as more subconcious. I think its more the way our brain functions. I personally am very aware of self. Exactly how my brains google function works is beyond me. But i am very aware of it, how to use it, what it does, etc. I can even learn how others work and tap into it. Basically creating a map of how a person works. I woupd say that people who are not self aware do have a very heavy lean toward subconcious. If we ignore parts of us and bury them, they will come out subconciously. Evetually they get ignored and that makes it even more subconcious as we no longer even see its outcome. I really dont think this has to do with functions, but more of learning, adaptation, and our experiences. I call my GF out on alot of stuff she takes for granted, dismisses, or just doesnt see. Her wants are subconcious. Like the other day she said her cravings are broken because she walked past cake and didnt crave it. No, her desire to be healthy is so strong that the cake is no longer a want therefore its no longer a craving. You see it for what it is, and its not what you want. When it comes to her she is so unaware that i have to point out who she is as she gets lost in a tree. This tree is in my forest, lets say oak...i must have an oak forest. No, you have an oak tree that grew in a pine forest. She has focused so much on shallow "objectivity" that she sucks at subjectivity. Her subconcious comes out alot and to me its entertaining. Gotta love Te logic focused on subjectivity combined with inferior internal perception.

I do find it interesting when she says "i dont know what to feel" as if she has to feel something. Somethings are just moot and have no opinion.

 

[Rambling]

Interesting, sounds like a good book...

Will follow. Thanks.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

At the OP: Two notes. First:

Historically, Martin Seligman is usually the name most frequently associated with Positive Psychology; he's a past president of the American Psychological Association who pushed for more emphasis in modern psychology on developing tools to help otherwise-normal people live happier, more fulfilled lives (as opposed to simply treating the ill).

But I checked the APA website, and it looks like Haidt has been doing a lot of work in the Positive Psychology field as well. So maybe Haidt is taking over the lead on the subject. In any case, it seems that Seligman was historically more into the practical side of Positive Psychology, whereas Haidt may be developing the theoretical side.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, Seligman has lots of practical material for diagnosing one's level of happiness and avenues for increasing happiness. Here's an old post on the subject of Seligman's version of Positive Psychology: http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/general-psychology/3469-authentic-happiness-4.html#post111622

Second note:

I would disagree that just the Introverted functions map to the subconscious. First off, as an INFP I tend to think of both my top two functions (Fi and Ne) as largely unconscious, in the sense that they are largely automatic and default. I've been doing both Fi and Ne for so long, they just kind of happen without my thinking about them. To use a "shorthand" description of the two functions: Fi makes me sentimental, and Ne makes me a flake, and both functions are my default mode.

By contrast, I think of my lower functions as more conscious and deliberate (Si, Te, and so on down the function ladder). They require me to work outside my default mode, so I have to be more deliberate in deciding to break them out and wield them, as well as in how I apply them.

Let me stop here and switch gears for a moment. Here's the overall map of the human brain as I see it (as an amateur Freudian):

The true, deep *un*conscious is what Freud called "the id": Immature, emotional, full of wants and hidden drives, perversions, etc. It dates back to early childhood. It's the ultimate source of dreams and all that. Enough has been written about it that I don't think I need to dwell on it.

Layered over the *un*conscious is the *pre*conscious. Here's where we have our Jungian functions. This is the area where in our childhood and teens we worked out our preferred filters (Fi and Ne for me) for understanding and reacting to the world. We've been using those preferred filters or functions for so long that they've become pretty much automatic. They are our default for reacting to the world. But they're largely based on childish understandings of the world, and as a result there's much that's immature about them still. They function incompletely and inefficiently, and here's where you get a lot of the anxiety and discontent in the otherwise healthy human. For example, as an Fi/Ne, being sentimental and flakey can lead me into a lot of silly messes, making me kind of paranoid and distrustful of the world after a while.

Again, my *pre*conscious causes me to react in sentimental/flakey (Fi/Ne) ways to the world around me. But my *pre*conscious is much more accessible to me than my deep *un*conscious (the id), so to some extent I can become increasingly aware that sentimentalism and flakiness aren't always the best way to handle things. I can then consciously choose to move out of my comfort zone and try to develop other functions/filters for dealing with the world.

(Switching gears again.) As for the elephant/rider dichotomy at the start of the thread: There are traditionally more than one area of the subconscious. For example, in addition to the *un*conscious and the *pre*conscious, there's also the superego: That's the unconscious/default/automatic area where we take in and store the rules of the world: "Don't scratch your ass in public, nudity is bad, don't pick your nose, etc." It's largely unconscious to the point of being default; in fact we can feel quite anxious about something relatively harmless such as being dressed inappropriately for a social event or finding that we had food stuck in our teeth throughout a party, or any number of other petty social missteps. Carry that to an extreme where you have too strong a superego, and one can feel overly suffocated by rules and anxious about every step one takes.

So the elephant is thus kind of a mix. Depending on whether we talk about a deep mental illness or a temporary anxiety or a lingering dissatisfaction or light depression, one might look to different areas of the subconscious for a fix.

Anyway, to wrap it up:

I like Seligman's approach best. He doesn't try to spell out exactly why our troubles arise or talk about the architecture of the mind. He just says that there are a certain number of proven paths to greater satisfaction with life. So you do a Positive Psychology inventory, see where you score high or low, and try to do more of the things where you score low. Get out of your head, socialize more, get more balance in your life, blah, blah, blah.

But I'm curious to hear more about Haidt's approach as well. Perhaps I'll order up one of his books myself at some point.

[ETA:]

Interestingly, Jung and in particular his work psychological types is an example of positive psychology, but ever since Freud's and Jung's works were mostly rejected by academia in an effort to make psychology more scientific, psychology has largely focused on what goes wrong with the mind and has tended to assume a common understanding of how the human mind works normally.

I agree that Jung's work on psychological types is in fact positive psychology. But no one theory of how the mind works has ever been universally endorsed by the psychology field, so it usually comes down to whatever remedy works best for a given problem. Hence an emphasis on the practical over the theoretical. From your description, it sounds like maybe Haidt skirts the problem by taking a more philosophical approach rather than specifically endorsing one psychology school over another.