Jonathan Haidt's elephant and rider metaphor explains how emotion drives about 90% of our choices, not reason. Most reconciliation work targets the rational rider when it should appeal to the emotional elephant. Human irrationality follows three predictable patterns.
Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU, has a great analogy about how human brains actually make decisions. He talks about the elephant and the rider. Now, the rider is the rational side of your brain. It deliberates, it considers facts and data. The elephant is your emotional or irrational side. It makes quick decisions on intuition and gut instinct. And who do you think holds the power in this relationship? It's the elephant, as we just said, up to 90%. But now think about the change you want to see in the world. We just heard about reconciliation. When you are working towards that change, how much of your time and effort are you spending appealing to the rational rider and how much are you appealing to the emotional elephant? I'm guessing this is somewhere less than 90%. And I know this sounds overwhelming, but there's good news. While humans are irrational, we are predictably irrational. And as I spend my Saturday nights cozied up in bed with a stack of research papers— kind of wish that was a joke— we find that these irrational behaviors fall into 3 consistent patterns that we call our 3 basic human truths.
The Franklin Effect: Turn Your Biggest Critic Into Your Strongest Supporter (Psychology Explained)
