Using ideas and findings by Howard Margolis and Lawrence
Kohlberg, Jonathan Haidt[1] has
struggled to get a handle on the relative strength of emotions and reasoning in
making judgments. This blog’s writer has
in previous postings, especially the last one, reported on Haidt’s efforts at
finding a workable understanding of these concerns.
What this reporting has established
so far is that immediate reactions people have, to perceived stimuli, – Haidt
calls triggering events – is to engage their intuitions, which can include emotions,
and then, if the initial event rates some minimum level of importance, they
begin to utilize their reason.
That is, what
attracts a person’s attention, to begin with, needs to be important enough to motivate
him/her to reflect. Short of that, intuitions
and emotions will do. Obviously, if the
reader wants a more meaningful description of this process, he/she is invited
to look up the last posting, but better still, Haidt’s book is highly recommended.
What is important here, what is
deemed important for a civics teacher, is in teaching controversial material,
which should be common fair, a teacher should have a good sense of how this mix
plays out – at least at a basic level. A
good visualization is to see this process as one of cognition.
Cognition spans from the recognition
of simple perceptions to higher order abstracting, generalizing, problem
solving, and/or intricate and complex evaluating. On the other hand, the utilization of intuitions
and emotions is also involved with evaluating – often at a visceral level – and
with the other cognitive processes just mentioned.
In just about every encounter with a
stimulus, one emotes; does it help (advances a goal) eliciting a pleasant emotion,
or does it hurt (block or hinder a goal) eliciting a disagreeable emotion. Upon reflection, one can see this happens all
the time. One is not conscious of it
because the overwhelming incidences are just not that important.
For example, one looks in the
refrigerator and finds some special treat not there. A short “oh shucks” occurs and plan B takes
over almost automatically. But Haidt
realizes that such encounters that include intuitions and emotions also involve
the processing of information; they are also cognitions. “Emotions
are a kind of information processing.”[2] So, cognition does not separate emotions or,
for that matter intuitions, from cognition.
Instead, cognition can be divided into two categories or types: intuition/emotions and reasoning.
And with this context, one is well-served
to remember the distinction made in the last posting between “seeing-that” and
“reasoning-why.” The ongoing encounters
of stimuli is a non-stop succession of “seeing-that” experiences. These engender immediate cognitive responses
at various levels of consciousness.
They rely basically on automatic
reactions and they can include intuitions (usually) and emotions. Again, the level of reflection, most of the
time, is non-existent or very little.
Haidt uses the analogy of an elephant to represent this part of one’s
mental activity.
Haidt claims that this “elephant” –
the automatic processes – rule over the human or any animal’s mind. The evolution humans have been subject to has
increased the capacity of this automatic system. But of importance was the evolutionary
development that gave humans the capacity of language. And here a newer area of capacity came about
in the last million years. Because of
its quality to represent information, language allowed reasoning.
Reasoning, in turn, is given another
analogical representation, a “rider.”
Not an elephant jockey, but a rider who might attempt to control the
automatic process, but ultimately cannot.
The rider might influence the elephant, but the elephant is too big and
too strong. A stimulus is perceived;
then intuition automatically evaluates it; followed with the process making a
judgment. All this usually happens
instantly. If something is or goes wrong,
and the initial reaction is wanting, the automatic process will then leap to a
quick reasoning episode to fix the problem.
But there is more to this
process. If there’s a social response –
others do not like what the person has done or said – then the rider – the
“reasoning-why” element – produces an acceptable judgment and quickly,
intuitively, gauges the acceptance of the justification the rider has produced post hoc. The important thing is that reasoning did not
produce the reaction, intuition (maybe with emotions) did.
Haidt writes:
I also wanted to capture the social
nature of moral judgment … We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are
dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial
judgments. Yet friends can do for us
what we cannot do for ourselves; they can challenge us, giving us reasons and
arguments … that sometimes trigger new intuitions, thereby making it possible
for us to change our minds … [O]ther people exert a powerful force …[3]
With all the recent news concerning
law enforcement agency personnel being able to engage their reason upon discovering
new evidence after theories of a crime has already been formed, the above description
leads one to question this ability. This
writer will not pass judgment on this claim, but one can understand such an
ability does demand targeted training.
An observer can at least marvel at
professional investigators among the FBI and other agencies being able to do
that early reasoning or approaching that ability. Perhaps professionals who need to engage
their reason early in this cognitive process should not have a personal link or
stake in what is being investigated, as often is expected (the need to recuse
oneself comes to mind).
How about considering a sober
reality? That is, teachers deal with this
mix of factors all the time. And all of
this takes on a special importance when the teacher is a civics teacher and the
subject matter, he/she teaches, includes moral and/or prudential questions –
such as the morality and prudence of the death penalty.
Elsewhere in
this blog, it discusses instructional strategies that has students engage in
discussions, arguments, or debates. That
treatment holds such activities as reasoning exercises. But if one seriously accepts the above process,
with its automatic and unavoidable qualities, then any instruction calling for
students to engage in dialogue, intuition and emotions need to be considered.
In that, Haidt
offers some advice. Of all sources, he believes
the old counsel Dale Carnegie gives should be taken to heart. That is, a person dialoguing with someone
else should: one, convey warmth,
respect, and a willingness to listen before uttering opinions or beliefs; two,
build up the ability to see things from the point of view of the other person; and
three, with a deep seated – intuitively – ability to respect the other’s
position, one can harbor true empathy.
These abilities can counter any sense
of righteousness, although as one crosses moral divides, this becomes difficult
and, perhaps, in the extreme, unadvisable.
One does need to maintain one’s moral base and not communicate
acceptance of immoral positions, commitments, or policies. There are limits to dialogue.
[1] Jonathan Haidt, The
Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are
Divided by Politics and Religion (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2012).
[2] Ibid., 45.
Emphasis in the original.
[3] Ibid., 46-47.
