Concept
The rider and the elephant
The rider and the elephant is Haidt's image of the divided self: conscious reasoning is a small rider on a large elephant of automatic processes, appetites, emotions and habits. The rider plans and argues, but when they disagree the elephant wins, and much of the rider's work is justifying what the elephant wanted.
The image gives Kahneman's two systems a body and explains weakness of will without moral failure. The rider makes a reasonable plan at nine in the morning; at nine at night the tired elephant wants the couch and the rider produces, on request, an excellent argument for the couch. Haidt's research on judgement suggests the rider is less a decider than a press secretary, and very good at the job. The practical consequence is that an elephant does not change because the rider has a better argument. It changes through what it meets repeatedly, the same cue, the same path, the same reward, until the new route is the easy one. That is why habit design and environment beat resolutions, and why the rider's real power is choosing what the elephant will be exposed to. James Clear's identity-based habits are the same lever: each small action is a vote the elephant counts.
A real-life example
An accountant in Ankara has resolved to run before work for three years and has run forty mornings. He stops making plans, puts the shoes by the bed, moves the alarm across the room and arranges a neighbour's knock at six-thirty. The elephant, meeting a knock and a waiting friend, walks: twenty mornings in a month.
How to use it
- 1When you fail to do what you planned, ask what the elephant wanted rather than why you were weak.
- 2Stop arguing with the elephant; change the cue, the path or the reward it will meet.
- 3Use the rider for what it is good at: choosing the environment in advance.