While it might look like the rider is in control, the outcome of the ride is really up to the much more powerful elephant.

Haidt uses the metaphor of a person riding an elephant. In the end, drawing on numerous studies and experiments that he and other colleagues conducted, Haidt argues that Hume won the debate, and that reason truly is the servant of the passions. While Plato argued for the primacy of reason, 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume thought that emotion was dominant, and the American founding father Thomas Jefferson suggested a middle path where both forces shared equal weight. The philosophical debate over whether reason or emotion rules the human psyche is an ancient one.

In other words, while we may think our opinions are based on some conscious, rational reason, in most cases we’re responding to an unconscious “gut feeling,” and only later coming up with reasons to justify that instinct. Haidt’s first maxim of moral psychology is that Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. To listen to the audio version of this Book Bite, download the Next Big Idea App today. Read on for five key insights from The Righteous Mind. The book quickly became an influential bestseller that the New York Times called “a landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself.” In 2012, psychologist and New York University professor Jonathan Haidt released The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided Over Politics and Religion, the result of years of research into how unconscious moral systems color our worldviews and can lead to tribal divisions. But in truth, this tendency for people to split into oppositional groups runs deep in human history. Have we ever been more divided as a nation? At a time when American liberals and conservatives are at each other’s throats, it can seem like we’re caught in a sort of death spiral of polarization-not even able hear each other’s opinions respectfully, much less come together to craft legislation or solve big social problems.

The righteous mind book