Haidt's Elephant and Rider Tool

Haidt (2012) offers a good summary of the Elephant and Rider metaphor toward end of chapter 2, offering evidence for why we ought to be guided in our K2A planning by this metaphor in chapters 3 and 4.  

The crucial distinction is really between two different kinds of cognition:  intuition and reasoning (p. 45/53, depending on version of the book).

"Automatic processes run the human mind, just as they have been running animal minds for 500 million years, so they’re very good at what they do, like software that has been improved through thousands of product cycles.  When human beings evolved the capacity for language and reasoning at some point in the last million years, the brain did not rewire itself to hand over the reins to a new and inexperienced charioteer.  Rather, the rider (language-based reasoning) evolved because it did something useful for the elephant" (p. 45-46/53-54).

Several things, most importantly:  "the rider acts as the spokesman for the elephant… is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant has just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the elephant wants to do next… a public relations firm" (p. 46/54).