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Executive Times |
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2007 Book Reviews |
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Gut
Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Intuition Gerd
Gigerenzer is a prominent neuroscientist who directs the Center for Adaptive
Behavior and Cognition at the Max Plank Institute for Human Development in
Berlin, Germany. Malcolm Gladwell based parts of his popular book, Blink, on
Gigerenzer’s work. In his new book, Gut
Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, Gigerenzer presents loads
of examples of why intuition can serve us better than reason when making
decisions and taking action. Here’s an excerpt, pp. 185-189: UNDERSTANDING MORAL BEHAVIOR My
analysis of moral behavior looks at how the world is, rather than how it should
be. The latter is the domain of moral philosophy. The study of moral
intuitions will never replace the need for moral prudence and individual
responsibility, but it can help us to understand which environments influence
moral behavior and so find ways of making changes for the better. My
thesis is that humans have an innate capacity for morals just as they do for
language. Children are as genetically prepared to pick up local moral rules
as they are the grammar of their native language. From subculture to
subculture, they learn subtle distinctions, which resemble the intricacies
of local dialects, about how to behave in particular situations. In the same
way that native speakers can tell a correct sentence from an incorrect one
without being able to explain why, the set of rules underlying the “moral
grammar” is typically not in awareness. Moral grammar, I argue, can be
described by rules of thumb. Unlike in language, however, these rules are
often in conflict with each other, and the result can be either morally
repulsive, as in mass killing, or admirable, as with organ donation or
risking one’s life to save another. The underlying rule is not good or bad
per se. But it can be applied to the wrong situation. I’d summarize my
thoughts on moral intuitions into three principles: •Lack of
awareness. A
moral intuition, like other gut feelings, appears quickly in consciousness,
is strong enough to act upon, and its underlying rationale cannot be
verbalized. •Roots and
rules. The
intuition is attached to one of three “roots” (individual, extended family,
or community) and to an emotional goal (e.g., prevent harm) and can be
described by rules of thumb. These are not necessarily specific to moral
behavior, but underlie other actions. •Social
environment. Moral
behavior is contingent on the social environment. Some moral disasters can
be prevented if one knows the rules guiding people’s behavior and the
environments triggering these rules. Moral
feelings differ with respect to the roots they are attached to: the
individual, the family, or the community. A “classical” liberal, for
example, understands morality to be about protecting the rights and liberties
of individuals. As long as the rights of each individual are protected,
people can do what they want. Other behavior is consequently not seen as a
moral issue, but as the result of social conventions or a matter of personal
choice. According to this individual-centered view, pornography and drug use
are matters of personal taste, whereas homicide and rape are in the moral
domain. Yet in other views or cultures, moral feelings extend to the family
rather than to the individual alone. In a family-centered culture, each
member has a role to play, such as mother, wife, and eldest son, and a
lifelong obligation to the entire family. Finally, moral feelings can extend
to a community of people who are related symbolically rather than
genetically, by religion, local origin, or party membership. The ethics of
community include principles that liberals would not acknowledge as the most
important moral values, including loyalty to one’s group and respect for
authority. Most conservatives embrace the ethics of community and oppose what
they see as the narrow moral of individual freedom. Political and religious
liberals may have a hard time understanding what conservatives are talking
about when they refer to “moral values” or why conservatives would want to
restrict the rights of homosexuals who aren’t curbing the rights of others. The
psychologist Jon Haidt proposed five evolved capacities, each like a taste
bud: a sensitivity to harm,
reciprocity, hierarchy, in-group, and purity.6 He suggests the
mind is prepared to attach moral sentiments to all or several of these,
depending on the culture in which it develops. Let me connect the taste buds
with the three roots. In a society with an individualistic ethic, only the
first two buds are activated: to protect people from harm, and to uphold
individual rights by insisting on fairness and reciprocity According to this
ethic, the right to abortion or to free speech and the rejection of torture
are moral issues. Western moral psychology has been imprinted with this
focus on the individual, so that from its perspective, moral feelings are
about personal autonomy. In
a society with a family-oriented ethic, moral feelings concerning harm and
reciprocity are rooted in the family, not in the individual. It is the
welfare and honor of the family that needs protection. When it leads to
nepotism, this ethic may appear suspect from the individualist point of view.
In many traditional societies, however, nepotism is a moral obligation, not a
crime, and smaller dynasties exist in modern democracies as well, from In
a society with a community orientation, concerns about harm, reciprocity, and
hierarchy relate to the community as its root, rather than to the family or
individual. Its ethical view activates all five sensitivities, including
those for ingroup and purity Most tribes, religious groups, or nations
advocate virtues of patriotism, loyalty, and heroism, and individuals from
time immemorial have sacrificed their lives for their ingroup. In times of
war, “support our troops” is the prevailing patriotic feeling, and criticizing
them is seen as betrayal. Similarly, most communities have a code of purity
pollution, and divinity. People feel disgusted when this code is violated, be
it in connection with eating dogs, sex with goats, or simply not taking a
shower every day. Whereas in Western countries moral issues tend to center
on personal freedom (such as the right to end one’s life), in other
societies, moral behavior is more focused on the ethics of community
including duty respect, and obedience to authority and on the ethics of
divinity such as attaining purity and sanctity. Note
that these are orientations rather than clear-cut categories. Each human
society draws its moral feelings from the three roots, albeit with different
emphases. The Ten Commandments of the Bible, the 613 mitzvot, or laws, of the
Torah, and most other religious texts address all three. For instance, “You
shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” protects the individual
rights of others, “Honor your father and mother” ensures respect of familial
authority, and “You shall have no other gods besides me” necessitates
obeying the laws of divinity in the community Because moral feelings are
anchored in different roots, conflicts wifi be the rule rather than the
exception. In
contrast to my view, moral psychology—like much of moral philosophy—links
moral behavior with verbal reasoning and rationality Lawrence Kohlberg’s
theory of cognitive development, for instance, assumes a logical progression
of three levels of moral understanding (each subdivided into two stages). At
the lowest level, young children define the meaning of what is right in terms
of “I like it,” that is, a selfish evaluation of what brings rewards and
avoids punishment. At the intermediate “conventional” level, older children
and adults judge what is virtuous by whether “the group approves,” that is,
by authority or one’s reference group. At the highest “postconventional”
level, what is right is defined by objective, abstract, and universal
principles detached from the self or the group. In Kohlberg’s words: “We
claim that there is a universally valid form of rational moral thought
process which all persons could articulate.”7 The
evidence for these stages comes from children’s answers to verbally presented
moral dilemmas, rather than from observations of actual behavior. Kohlberg’s
emphasis on verbalization contrasts with our first principle, lack of
awareness. The ability to describe the grammatical rules of one’s native
language would be a poor measure of one’s intuitive knowledge of the grammar.
Similarly, children may have a much richer moral system than they can tell.
Kohlberg’s emphasis on individual rights, justice, fairness, and the welfare
of people also assumes the individual to be the root of moral thinking,
rather than the community or family. However, years of experimental studies
do not suggest that moral growth resembles strict stages. Recall that
Kohlberg’s scheme has three levels, each divided in two stages; thus in
theory, there are six stages. Yet stages one, five, and six rarely occur in
their pure form in either children or adults; the typical child mixes stages
two and three, and adults mix the two stages at the conventional level. On a
worldwide scale, only 1 or 2 percent of adults were classified to be at the
highest level. I
do not doubt that deliberate thinking about good and bad happens, although it
may often take place after the fact to justify our actions. But here I’d like
to focus on the moral behavior based on gut feelings. Our
instincts are well formed, and intuition can often be the best guide for
action. Thanks to Gut
Feelings, some readers will become more comfortable with avoiding the
rational path for certain decisions. Steve
Hopkins, September 25, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Gut Feelings.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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