Author: Johnathan Haidt
Notes:
- Human thinking depends on metaphor → We understand new or complex things based on what we know
- How we think?
- Historically: Divided self
- Buddhism: Mind as a wild elephant
- Plato: Rational mind has reins on chariot
- Freud: Ego, Superego and ID
- Author (Haidt): Rider on an elephant
- Rider and Elephant have own intellgence
- Don't always work together!
- Emotionally intelligent person has skilled rider who can distract and coax elephant, not a contest of wills
- Minds are a loose confederation of parts but we pay too much attention to the conscious verbal thinking
- Ways we are divided
- Mind vs Body
- Diff parts of body have their own agenda
- Gut brain - high degree of autonomy and functions seperately
- Left vs Right
- Left: Language processing and analytics
- Right: Patterns in space
- Study shows we will confabulate (make up reasons) for own behaviour, shown in split brain tests
- New vs Old
- Evolution of diff parts of brain over time
- Promethean script: Ancestors received divine gift of reason (which makes rationality new to us and unmastered)
- BUT - Human rationality depends critically on emotionality
- Controlled vs Automatic
- Example of automatic → Priming effect (fluency)
- Automatic: Can be controlled by stimulus control (behaviourist model)
- Controlled allows people to think LT goals over temptation
- But, has little power to cause behaviour
- How to change your mind?
- Pop Psych: Control your interpretation → Control your world
- But, the rider can't just decide to change and order the elephant to go along
- Requires retraining of elephant
- Elephant reacts before rider even sees snake on path
- Nature and nurture work together to explain personality, but Nature > Nurture
- Genes are recipes for producing a person over years
- Tactics for changing mind