The Hidden Drivers of Your Mind: Why We Think, Judge, and Decide the Way We Do

We like to believe our thoughts are rational and logical, and that we are always in control. But are we? How exactly do we think, judge, and decide? Below, we’ll explore the answers to these questions. What we learn here comes from our evolution from living in small family groups as hunter-gatherers to living in today’s nation-states. It also sets the stage for how we can influence or be influenced by others.

How We Think and Act: Two Processes at Work

In the simplest terms, we think and act to survive and thrive in our surroundings. Previously, psychologists viewed the brain and mind as a computer, an information-processing machine that operates in a logical manner. Then, in the 1990s, they began to realize that there are always really two processing systems at work in the mind:

1. automatic processes, and
2. controlled processes that operate logically

Haidt’s “Rider and the Elephant”

In “The Happiness Hypotheses,” Jonathan Haidt, to better help us understand, called these two mental processes the:

1. elephant (automatic processes) and the
2. rider (controlled processes)

The Elephant: Automatic Processes

Most mental processes happen automatically, without the need for conscious attention or control. Breathing, blinking, seeing, smelling, hearing, daydreaming, and other such activities are all done automatically. So, most automatic processes are completely unconscious.

Our senses receive stimuli from the environment, send signals to the brain, which interprets, matches patterns, and provides responses. Even the simplest animals are wired to respond to specific stimuli, such as light, with specific behaviors, like turning away from the light. Animals quickly learn new patterns and associate them with their existing behaviors, which can also be turned into new patterns (as when an animal trainer teaches a dog a new trick).

The Rider: Controlled Processes

Some mental processes, on the other hand, we are conscious of and can control. Hence, they are referred to as controlled processes. They include the kinds of thinking that:

• takes some effort,
• proceeds in steps, and
• we are always aware of

For example, consider thinking about what to eat for lunch. It does take some effort. You consider the various options before making a choice. All the while, you are conscious of these thoughts going on in your mind. However, when you finally sit down to eat, the eating process occurs automatically without you giving it a thought.

Huge Elephant, Small Rider

At any given moment, our mind handles numerous tasks. All but one of these tasks are handled automatically.

While automatic processing can run in parallel and handle multiple tasks simultaneously, controlled processing is limited. We can only think consciously about one thing at a time.

Perhaps because of the relative size of automatic processing compared to controlled processing, Haidt chose an elephant over a horse because elephants are larger and more intelligent.

Imagine a relatively small rider on a huge elephant.

Haidt, in later years, was inspired to refer to the elephant simply as “intuition” and to call the rider “reasoning”.

For another example, intuition shines when driving to the airport if you are a good driver familiar with the route. Almost everything you do on your way will be automatic without much thought.

Similarly, an example of reasoning is planning a trip to the airport to catch an afternoon flight. What time do you leave your house? You must think about that consciously, considering possible traffic on the road and the check-in process at the airport.

Let’s examine intuition and reasoning in greater detail, shall we?

Intuition

Intuition, or “the elephant,” as Haidt earlier refers, includes the gut feelings, visceral reactions, and emotions that comprise much of the automatic system. It operates automatically, requires little or no effort, and is hard to control.

Natural selection has shaped our intuition to trigger quick and reliable action. Like all other animal brains, our brains integrate information from various parts of our body to respond quickly and automatically to environmental threats and opportunities.

So, intuitions run the human mind, just as they have been running animal minds over time. They have become very good at what they do, like software that has been improved through thousands of product cycles.

Our intuition involves parts of our brain that make us feel pleasure and pain and that trigger survival–related motivations.  We are wired so that food and sex give us a burst of dopamine, which acts on areas of the brain to give us feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation. That is the brain’s way of making us enjoy the activities that are good for the survival of our genes (passing on our traits).

Without fail, our intuition has its finger on our dopamine release button. And so, we are drawn to novel, pleasurable, comfortable, or familiar things.

For example, if you are given several ways of achieving the same goal, which would you rather take, the least demanding or the more demanding course of action? I presume you take the least demanding.

We are born prepared to perceive the world around us, recognize objects, direct attention, and avoid losses by constantly evaluating situations as good or bad, requiring escape or permitting approach.

Other mental activities become fast and automatic through prolonged practice. Remember the effortless driving to the airport earlier? Driving first must be learned and practiced before it becomes automatic.

Learning, Forming, and Assessing What Is Normal

We learn by association; nothing is learned in isolation. Our brains connect new information to what we already know, making it easy for us to remember. We associate causes with their effects (e.g., viruses with HIV), objects with their properties (e.g., balls being spherical), and items with their categories (e.g., bananas with fruit). The more associations we make with a piece of information, the easier it becomes to remember.

For example, historical facts become more memorable when linked to stories, movies, or documentaries. These multiple associations reinforce learning and improve recall.

Repetition and practice also strengthen learning. Just as frequently used bush paths remain clear while unused ones fade, reinforced associations become stronger and more durable while weak ones disappear.

In “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman suggested that intuition’s main function is to maintain and update a model of your world, which presents what is normal to you.

The model is formed by associations that link ideas or circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that happen regularly, either at the same time or within a short period. As these links are formed and strengthened, they come to represent what is normal in your life, determining your interpretation of the present and your expectations of the future.

We are surprised when we encounter something different from what is normal for us. It’s how our mind works. Our surprise reactions reveal what we know about the world and what we expect to happen in it. Surprise can prompt us to rethink what we consider normal.

To see this in action, imagine you are born into a family and community that’s deeply entrepreneurial, where risk-taking is encouraged, and failure is accepted as part of the success journey. You will grow up with these beliefs and practices as your norm, shaping your worldview.

You are surprised when you come across contrary practices, where risk-taking is discouraged and failure a taboo.

Surprise and other emotions reveal intuition at work, showing how quickly our mind flags what doesn’t fit our normal.

Emotions

Emotions, a significant part of intuition, were long thought to be dumb and just related to deep inward feelings without any thinking involved. However, in the 1980s, scientists increasingly recognized that emotions were filled with thinking.

Your emotions occur in stages, the first of which your brain assesses something that has just happened based on whether it advances or hinders your goals. These assessments involve information processing or thinking. After the assessment, you are set to respond appropriately.

For example, if you hear someone running up behind you on a dark street, your fear system detects a threat. It triggers your fight-or-flight response, enabling you to quickly absorb more information.

The building blocks humans use to construct moral systems and communities are primarily emotional, such as sympathy, fear, anger, and affection.

Summing up Intuition

Overall, your intuition:

• Provides the impressions that often turn into your beliefs.
• Is the source of impulses that often become your choices and actions.
• Interprets what happens to and around you, linking the present with the recent past and expectations about the near future.
• Contains the models of the world that instantly evaluate events as normal or surprising for you.
• Is the source of your rapid and often precise intuitive judgments.

And again, it does most of this without your conscious awareness of its activities.

Lastly, your intuition is the source of many of your biases.

Reasoning

Reasoning, or “the rider,” as Haidt earlier refers, is our conscious, controlled thoughts. It is rational and focuses on tasks that require a lot of mental effort, like solving complex problems. It is responsible for concentration, deliberate thinking, and making us feel in control of our choices.

An example of reasoning is making a marketing plan. It requires attention and effort, and you must construct your thoughts in orderly steps.

Attention and Effort

We decide what to do, but we have limited control over the effort of doing it. Our response to mental overload is selective and precise. Our brain protects the most critical activity so that it receives the attention it needs. Spare attention is allocated second by second to other tasks as needed.

Over time, our brains have evolved to allocate attention adequately. As suggested earlier, our ability to adapt and respond quickly to the most significant threats or promising opportunities improves our chances of survival.

In this regard, our intuition and reasoning are active whenever we are awake. While our intuition runs automatically, our reasoning is usually in a comfortable low-effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged.

By design, our intuition takes over in emergencies and prioritizes self-protective actions.

If you’re a good driver, imagine yourself at the wheel of a car that unexpectedly skids on a slippery road. You’ll find that you have responded to the threat before you became fully conscious of it.

Reasoning comes into play when it detects that you are about to make an error. Remember when you almost blurted out an offensive remark and how hard you worked to restore control? That’s your reasoning at play.

One of the tasks of reasoning is overcoming your intuition’s impulses. In other words, reasoning oversees self-control. But it requires resources (effort) that your brain tries to conserve.

So, laziness is built into our nature.

Lazy by Nature

Again, in “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman suggested that reasoning has a natural speed.

Unless you are in a situation that makes you unusually wary or self-conscious, monitoring what happens in your environment or inside your head demands little effort. You make many small decisions as you drive your car, absorb some information as you read the newspaper, and conduct routine exchanges of pleasantries with people, all with little effort and no strength, just like a stroll.

It is normally easy and quite pleasant to walk and think simultaneously, but at the extreme, these activities compete for limited reasoning resources. That’s why navigating a rough terrain while solving a complex problem will be challenging.

For most of us, staying focused and thinking deeply requires willpower.

Depletion of Willpower

It is now widely accepted that self-control (willpower) and focused thinking are forms of mental work. So, a Key function of reasoning, controlling thoughts and behaviors, requires attention and energy, which are in limited supply.

Research arguably shows that using willpower is tiring. When you force yourself to do something difficult, you have less willpower for the next challenge.

Tasks that demand much reasoning seem to require self-control, and using self-control is draining and uncomfortable. This mental fatigue is partly about motivation. After one mentally demanding task, you may not feel like doing another, though you still could push through if you had to, especially with a strong incentive. Studies show people can overcome mental fatigue when given a strong enough reason.

So, a good place to start motivating people to complete a task is by making it as easy as possible.

Seeking Ease

Kahneman suggested that whenever you are conscious, and perhaps even when you are not, your brain is constantly processing information to keep track of some key questions:

• Is anything new going on?
• Is there a threat?
• Are things going well?
• Should your attention be redirected?
• Is more effort needed for this task?

You can imagine your mind as a control panel with dials that monitor these essential factors. The assessments are carried out automatically by intuition¹, while reasoning² comes into play when extra effort is required.

One of the dials measures thinking ease, which ranges from “easy” to “strained.”

• Easy is a sign that things are going well – no threats, no major news, no need to redirect attention or mobilize effort.
• Strained indicates that a problem exists, requiring more reasoning. As a result, you experience strain.

Thinking strain is influenced by how much effort you’re currently using and any unmet demands on your attention. Strain causes depletion of your willpower unless you’re motivated enough.

It’s worth repeating again that to motivate people to complete tasks, make such tasks as easy as possible to ensure a state of ease rather than strain.

For example, a website designed for selling a product should make it easy to find the:

• Product on the site
• Information that promotes and helps complete the purchase
• Checkout process

Summing up Reasoning

Overall, reasoning:

• Focuses on complex mental tasks requiring attention and effort
• Makes you feel in control of your choices
• Is responsible for overcoming your intuition’s impulses, but it’s lazy
• Requires willpower or self-control, which seems to get depleted with use but can be boosted by motivation
• Leans toward ease and avoids strain

Lastly, when we think of ourselves, we identify with the conscious, reasoning self with rational beliefs that choose what to think about and do. But are we right?

So, what is the relationship between intuition (the elephant) and reasoning (the rider)?

Let’s explore that below.

Our Judgment and Decision-Making Process

As suggested earlier, intuition runs our minds, just as it has been running animal minds for a long time. It’s very good at what it does, as it has been refined over time.

When humans evolved the capacity for language and reasoning, the brain (mind) did not develop itself to hand over control to a new and inexperienced driver. Intuition was already in charge. Instead, reasoning evolved because it did something useful for intuition.

The rider evolved to serve the elephant.

Reasoning can help us:

• See further into the future (because we can examine alternative scenarios in our head), and therefore, it can help intuition make better decisions in the present.  We can imagine alternatives that are not visually present, weigh long-term health risks against present pleasures, and learn in conversation about which choices will bring success and prestige.
• Learn new and complex skills and master new technologies, which can be deployed to help intuition reach its goal and sidestep disaster.

And most importantly, reasoning acts as the lawyer or spokesman for intuition, even though it doesn’t necessarily know what intuition is thinking.

Reasoning is skilled at fabricating post hoc (after the event) explanations for whatever intuition has just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever intuition wants to do next.

Also, because we gossiped about each other since we developed languages, it became extremely valuable for the elephant (intuition) to carry along a rider who is a full-time public relations firm (reasoning).

So, intuition often drives our judgments and decisions, and reasoning then typically justifies such judgments and decisions.

Note that there are times when reasoning does drive our judgments and decisions, regardless of what intuition thinks. Such times include when:

• Our reputation is on the line, and when
• We genuinely seek to promote the greater good.

Ultimately, the elephant and the rider each have their part to play, and when they work together well, they enable the unique brilliance of human beings.

But they don’t always work together well. And most times…

Intuition First, Reasoning Second

An example to illustrate that intuition comes first (drives our judgments and decisions), and then reasoning follows (to justify such judgments and decisions) is the famous Muller-Lyer illusion.

Take a look at the figure below.

Lines 1 and 2 are of the same length (identical). But you’ll always see line 1 as longer than line 2 even after you know the two lines are the same length. 

Our intuition tells us one is longer based on what it sees, even though our reasoning says it’s not.

Also, here is a feature of daily life that illustrates that intuition comes first (wins) while reasoning comes second. This feature illustrates the sometimes-complex relationship between the rider and the elephant.

Failure of Self-Control and the Difficulty of Changing Behavior

Recall that your elephant (intuition) is drawn to things that are familiar, pleasurable, comfortable, or novel—basically, your daily routine.

But the rider (reasoning) has determined that some of these things are not good for you in the long term (as the rider allows you to plan ahead and sacrifice short-term wants for long-term gains).

How does the rider restrain the elephant’s wanting?

It attempts that through willpower (self-control). Again, remember that willpower gets used up quickly. Like a tired muscle, your self-control soon wears down and gives in, while your intuition (elephant) runs automatically, effortlessly, and endlessly.

Imagine that you surf social media for a large chunk of your working hours instead of concentrating on your work.

You have reasoned that such behavior is not good for your long-term gains and that you need to change it. Unfortunately, all your attempts at changing it keep failing. Now you understand why.

 To successfully change your behavior, you need to first win over or attract the elephant (intuition) by:

• Motivating it
• Working with or changing the stimulus (trigger or prompt) that causes the old behavior
• Making the new behavior very easy to do
• Celebrating and repeating the new behavior till it becomes routine

For changing your surfing social media instead of working behavior, this means:

• Visualizing how successful you are in a year after putting in more work during working hours to motivate your intuition (elephant)
• Finding, working with, or changing what prompts you to surf social media instead of working. Perhaps it’s boredom
• Making at least part of your work easy and fun to do, even when bored
• Celebrating and repeating your new behavior of working even when bored, till it becomes routine

Hence, reasoning has relatively little power to cause behavior. The rider cannot order the elephant around against its will.

The elephant mostly holds sway, as the social intuitionist model explains.

The Social Intuitionist Model

As partly described above and as proposed by Jonathan Haidt in “The Righteous Mind,” the social intuitionist model outlines our judgment and decision-making process.

As the figure depicts, intuition (the elephant) quickly makes a judgment or decision (link 1), and reasoning (the rider) comes after trying to justify such judgment or decision to other people (link 2). Friends (link 3) or social pressures (link 4) can possibly sway intuition (the elephant) to change its judgment. Rarely can reasoning (the rider) make a change in judgment (link 5) or sway intuition to make such a change (link 6).

So, we often make our first judgments rapidly and are dreadful at seeking 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 (link 3) that sometimes trigger new intuitions, making it possible for us to change our minds.

We occasionally do this when we think about a problem by ourselves, suddenly seeing things in a new light or from a new perspective. Link 6 in the model represents this process of private reflection. This line is dotted because this process doesn’t happen often. For most of us, it is not every day or every month that we change our minds about an issue without any prompting from anyone else.

Far more common than such private mind-changing is social influence. Others can sway the elephant’s quick judgments. Indeed, other people influence us constantly by revealing that they like or dislike somebody. That form of influence is link 4, the social persuasion link.

Many of us believe that we have an inner moral compass that we follow. Still, history demonstrates that other people exert a powerful force on us. They can make cruelty seem acceptable and kindness seem embarrassing, without giving us any reason or arguments. Ever wonder how genocides happen?

The social intuitionist model explains why arguments are frustrating, especially moral and political arguments.

Why Winning an Argument is Difficult

It is difficult to win an argument because we use our intuitions to make judgments quickly and then use reasoning to justify such judgments.

As Haidt explains, what we hear from the other party, their arguments, are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by thoroughly disproving their arguments.

If you want to change people’s minds, you have to talk to their elephant. You have to use links 3 and 4 of the social intuitionist model to bring about new intuitions, not new rationales.

For example, let’s say you are arguing with a friend about the right way to start a business. You won’t make any headway by being confrontational and totally disproving his approach. Rather, he will dig in and stick to his guns and say that his approach is right.

To win him over, you need to be friendly, listen, get his point of view, and see things from his angle as well as your own. You then need to show understanding and respect for his views, be open to dialogue with him before stating your own case.

Our Process as Mental Shortcuts

As you can confirm, most of our judgments, decisions, and actions are often appropriate.  

Our world is incredibly complex and fast-paced. We face countless decisions and situations every day. To cope with this, we evolved to be guided by our intuitions instead of reasoning about everything we encounter. And our confidence in our intuitive beliefs and preferences is usually justified. But not always.

In “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” Robert Cialdini suggested that we consider our judgment and decision-making process as mental shortcuts. It isn’t perfect—sometimes, our quick reactions aren’t the best response to a situation. We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.

But we need these shortcuts because we don’t have the time, energy, or capacity to think through everything we encounter carefully.

So, because intuition’s (the elephant’s) shortcuts can lead to biases, we must recognize high-stakes situations and use effortful reasoning (the rider) to avoid mistakes.

On a final note, why we think, judge, and decide the way we do sets the stage for the following articles, which explore how:

• What we learnt here came from our evolutionary roots, and how
• We can influence or be influenced by others. Make no mistakes: influence is a two-way street.

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NOTES

1) In “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman refers to automatic processes as System 1, just as Haidt refers to the same as “the elephant” and “intuition.”

2) In “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman refers to controlled processes as System 2, just as Haidt refers to the same as “the rider” and “reasoning.”