The Righteous Mind: First Principle

People reason and people have moral intuitions (including moral emotions), but what is the relationship among these processes? Plato believed that reason could and should be the master; Jefferson believed that the two processes were equal partners (head and heart) ruling a divided empire; Hume believed that reason was (and was only fit to be) the servant of the passions. In this chapter I [the author] tried to show that Hume was right:

• The mind is divided into parts, like a rider (controlled processes) on an elephant (automatic processes). The rider evolved to serve the elephant.
• You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the servant (reasoning) comes back empty-handed, the master (intuition) doesn't change his judgment.
• The social intuitionist model starts with Hume's model and makes it more social. Moral reasoning is part of our lifelong struggle to win friends and influence people. That's why I say that “intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” You'll misunderstand moral reasoning if you think about it as something people do by themselves in order to figure out the truth.
• Therefore, if you want to change someone's mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first. If you ask people to believe something that violates their intuitions, they will devote their efforts to finding an escape hatch—a reason to doubt your argument or conclusion. They will almost always succeed.

The first principle of moral psychology is Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. In support of this principle, I reviewed six areas of experimental research demonstrating that:

• Brains evaluate instantly and constantly.
• Social and political judgments depend heavily on quick intuitive flashes.
• Our bodily states sometimes influence our moral judgments. Bad smells and tastes can make people more judgmental (as can anything that makes people think about purity and cleanliness).
• Psychopaths reason but don't feel (and are severely deficient morally).
• Babies feel but don't reason (and have the beginnings of morality).
• Affective reactions are in the right place at the right time in the brain.

Putting all six together gives us a pretty clear portrait of the rider and the elephant, and the roles they play in our righteous minds. The elephant (automatic processes) is where most of the action is in moral psychology. Reasoning matters, of course, particularly between people, and particularly when reasons trigger new intuitions. Elephants rule, but they are neither dumb nor despotic. Intuitions can be shaped by reasoning, especially when reasons are embedded in a friendly conversation or an emotionally compelling novel, movie, or news story.

How moral thinking is more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth:

• We are obsessively concerned about what others think of us, although much of the concern is unconscious and invisible to us.
• Conscious reasoning functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president.
• With the help of our press secretary, we are able to lie and cheat often, and then cover it up so effectively that we convince even ourselves.
• Reasoning can take us to almost any conclusion we want to reach, because we ask “Can I believe it?” when we want to believe something, but “Must I believe it?” when we don't want to believe. The answer is almost always yes to the first question and no to the second.
• In moral and political matters we are often groupish, rather than selfish. We deploy our reasoning skills to support our team, and to demonstrate commitment to our team.

I concluded by warning that the worship of reason, which is sometimes found in philosophical and scientific circles, is a delusion. It is an example of faith in something that does not exist. I urged instead a more intuitionist approach to morality and moral education, one that is more humble about the abilities of individuals, and more attuned to the contexts and social systems that enable people to think and act well.

Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) by Jonathan Haidt.