Overview
The metaphor of the rider and the elephant is used to illustrate the relationship between rational thinking and emotional intuition in decision-making. Here’s a summary:
The Rider: Represents rational, logical, and conscious thought. The rider is the part of us that plans, reasons, and makes decisions based on careful consideration.
The Elephant: Symbolizes our emotional, automatic, and intuitive responses. The elephant represents the powerful, often unconscious forces that drive our behavior and decisions.
Atop the elephant, the rider hold the reins and wants to guide the elephant. But, the elephant, being orders of magnitude stronger than the rider, is really the one determining the direction and speed. If the elephant really wants to go left, the rider can pull to the right all they want - that elephant is still going left. The metaphor highlights the primacy of the emotional/instinctual mind in determining our behaviors and choices.
Using a metaphor within a metaphor, Haidt describes the job of the rider as being the PR person for the elephant. The elephant goes left, accidentally crushes a park bench, and the rider is doing “damage control” by justifying and excusing the elephant’s movements. In other words, while we all like to think that we are rational agents, navigating life with reason, more often than not, it’s our emotions that make the first move. Our capacity for reason kicks in after the fact to make sense of those actions.