Concept
Intuitions Come First
Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second is Jonathan Haidt's first principle of moral psychology: a judgement of right or wrong usually arrives as a fast intuition, and conscious reasoning then works mainly to justify it rather than to test it.
Haidt set out the idea in a 2001 paper, 'The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail', and made it the first principle of The Righteous Mind (2012). His evidence includes moral dumbfounding: people who condemn a harmless but offensive act and keep their verdict after every reason they offer is knocked down. Reasoning, in this account, behaves more like a press secretary than a judge. Haidt does not say reasoning is useless. People reason better when they expect to explain themselves to an audience whose views they do not know and who cares about accuracy, and groups whose members are free to disagree catch errors that individuals miss. Some researchers argue the model underrates reasoning, so it is best read as a strong default rather than a law. The practical consequence is that rebutting someone's reasons rarely moves their judgement; the intuition has to be reached first.
A real-life example
A department head in Bursa feels at once that a colleague's request for a four-day week is unfair and has three objections written within minutes. Noticing the order, he writes down what would change his mind, asks the colleague to present her case to two people who do not know his view, and agrees to a three-month trial.
How to use it
- 1When a verdict arrives fast and strong, write down the evidence that would change it before looking for reasons.
- 2Before an important judgement, imagine explaining it to someone whose view you do not know and who cares about accuracy.
- 3In a disagreement, ask what the other person is worried about before rebutting their reasons.