The elephant and the rider

Haidt, a social psychologist, tests great ideas from the world’s wisdom traditions against modern research. He begins with the divided self. The mind is like a rider on an elephant. The rider is conscious reasoning; the elephant is the far larger realm of emotion, intuition and habit.

The rider can guide the elephant a little but cannot force it when the two disagree. That is why willpower so often fails and why we explain our choices after the fact. Lasting change means training the elephant, and Haidt points to meditation, cognitive therapy and, for some people, medication as ways to do it.