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Authors: George Marshall
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evolved to cope with our fears of death.
But of greatest relevance to our decision making around climate change is the discovery that this long evolutionary journey has led us to develop two distinct information processing systems. One is analytical, logical, and encodes reality in abstract symbols, words, and numbers. The other is driven by emotions (especially fear and anxiety), images, intuition, and experience. Language operates in both processes, but in the analytic system, it is used to describe and define; in the emotional system, it is used to communicate meaning, especially in the form of stories.
Brain scanning has confirmed that these systems are built into the physical architecture of the brain—the former in the cortex and posterior parietal cortex, the latter in the amygdala at the base of the brain. The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux argues in his book The Emotional Brain that, as our analytic systems evolved, the amygdala was allowed to maintain its dominance in decision making because of its ability to rapidly assess threats. So, while the analytic system is slow and deliberative, rationally weighing the evidence and probabilities, the emotional system is automatic, impulsive, and quick to apply mental shortcuts so that it can quickly reach conclusions.
There has been a very strong public interest in these findings in recent years and many attempts to name them. Seymour Epstein, who first identified them as two parallel systems, called them analytic processing and experiential processing. Others call them enlightenment reason and real reason, or the reflective system and the automatic system, or System 1 and System 2. I find it easier to call them the rational brain and the emotional brain . These are not ideal names but they are easy to follow.
One of reasons there have been so many different attempts to name them is that the systems are not separate and isolated but rather in constant communication. Attempting to capture this relationship, Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at New York University, hit on the image of an elephant and a rider. The rational rider does his best to steer the emotional elephant. He appears to be in control, though, in reality, a six-ton elephant is going to have the last say.
It is a nice image, and the second of many metaphorical elephants to appear in this book. However, this, too, is not entirely satisfactory because it underplays the communication between the two. The research shows that our rational rider will try to convince our emotional elephant and will deliberately shape arguments into stories and images that will appeal to the elephant. And the elephant is no dullard either. It is extremely adept at creating elaborate intellectual rationalizations for the rider to let it go on a path it had already decided to take. The image suggests the rider sitting under a little tent, pulling the reins, but the reality is more like Tarzan riding bareback and talking elephant (perhaps explaining why Hollywood thinks that the African jungle is full of Asian bananas).
Our perception of risk is dominated by our emotional brain. It favors proximity, draws on personal experience, and deals with images and stories that speak to existing values. As I will show later, threats that conjure up strong images or that are communicated in personal stories have disproportional sway over our decision making.
However, because the emotional brain is poorly suited to dealing with uncertain long-term threats of the kind that constitute climate change, the rational brain sometimes actively intervenes, using its abstract tools of planning and forward thinking. Indeed, experiments show that people deliberately enable this process by making an issue more distant in order to see it in rational perspective and then developing the short-term goals that give it emotional proximity. It is like a little dance—moving far away to admire your partner and then moving in close enough to kiss.
And this is exactly
But of greatest relevance to our decision making around climate change is the discovery that this long evolutionary journey has led us to develop two distinct information processing systems. One is analytical, logical, and encodes reality in abstract symbols, words, and numbers. The other is driven by emotions (especially fear and anxiety), images, intuition, and experience. Language operates in both processes, but in the analytic system, it is used to describe and define; in the emotional system, it is used to communicate meaning, especially in the form of stories.
Brain scanning has confirmed that these systems are built into the physical architecture of the brain—the former in the cortex and posterior parietal cortex, the latter in the amygdala at the base of the brain. The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux argues in his book The Emotional Brain that, as our analytic systems evolved, the amygdala was allowed to maintain its dominance in decision making because of its ability to rapidly assess threats. So, while the analytic system is slow and deliberative, rationally weighing the evidence and probabilities, the emotional system is automatic, impulsive, and quick to apply mental shortcuts so that it can quickly reach conclusions.
There has been a very strong public interest in these findings in recent years and many attempts to name them. Seymour Epstein, who first identified them as two parallel systems, called them analytic processing and experiential processing. Others call them enlightenment reason and real reason, or the reflective system and the automatic system, or System 1 and System 2. I find it easier to call them the rational brain and the emotional brain . These are not ideal names but they are easy to follow.
One of reasons there have been so many different attempts to name them is that the systems are not separate and isolated but rather in constant communication. Attempting to capture this relationship, Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at New York University, hit on the image of an elephant and a rider. The rational rider does his best to steer the emotional elephant. He appears to be in control, though, in reality, a six-ton elephant is going to have the last say.
It is a nice image, and the second of many metaphorical elephants to appear in this book. However, this, too, is not entirely satisfactory because it underplays the communication between the two. The research shows that our rational rider will try to convince our emotional elephant and will deliberately shape arguments into stories and images that will appeal to the elephant. And the elephant is no dullard either. It is extremely adept at creating elaborate intellectual rationalizations for the rider to let it go on a path it had already decided to take. The image suggests the rider sitting under a little tent, pulling the reins, but the reality is more like Tarzan riding bareback and talking elephant (perhaps explaining why Hollywood thinks that the African jungle is full of Asian bananas).
Our perception of risk is dominated by our emotional brain. It favors proximity, draws on personal experience, and deals with images and stories that speak to existing values. As I will show later, threats that conjure up strong images or that are communicated in personal stories have disproportional sway over our decision making.
However, because the emotional brain is poorly suited to dealing with uncertain long-term threats of the kind that constitute climate change, the rational brain sometimes actively intervenes, using its abstract tools of planning and forward thinking. Indeed, experiments show that people deliberately enable this process by making an issue more distant in order to see it in rational perspective and then developing the short-term goals that give it emotional proximity. It is like a little dance—moving far away to admire your partner and then moving in close enough to kiss.
And this is exactly
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