Usless Science Forum
The Psyche => Science and Psychology => Topic started by: Kafiri on September 20, 2007, 11:51:17 AM
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Recently I came across one of the most interesting and informative articles I have read in a long time. While the article does not in any manner mention Jung or his concepts I believe it unknowingly(unconsciously) demonstrates several Jungian concepts. Here is a bit of a teaser:
1) Intuitive primacy but not dictatorship. This is the idea, going back to Wilhelm Wundt and channeled through Robert Zajonc and John Bargh, that the mind is driven by constant flashes of affect in response to everything we see and hear.
Our brains, like other animal brains, are constantly trying to fine tune and speed up the central decision of all action: approach or avoid. You can't understand the river of fMRI studies on neuroeconomics and decision making without embracing this principle. We have affectively-valenced intuitive reactions to almost everything, particularly to morally relevant stimuli such as gossip or the evening news. Reasoning by its very nature is slow, playing out in seconds.
Studies of everyday reasoning show that we usually use reason to search for evidence to support our initial judgment, which was made in milliseconds. But I do agree with Josh Greene that sometimes we can use controlled processes such as reasoning to override our initial intuitions. I just think this happens rarely, maybe in one or two percent of the hundreds of judgments we make each week. And I do agree with Marc Hauser that these moral intuitions require a lot of computation, which he is unpacking.
Studies of everyday reasoning show that we usually use reason to search for evidence to support our initial judgment, which was made in milliseconds. But I do agree with Josh Greene that sometimes we can use controlled processes such as reasoning to override our initial intuitions. I just think this happens rarely, maybe in one or two percent of the hundreds of judgments we make each week. And I do agree with Marc Hauser that these moral intuitions require a lot of computation, which he is unpacking.
Hauser and I mostly disagree on a definitional question: whether this means that "cognition" precedes "emotion." I try never to contrast those terms, because it's all cognition. I think the crucial contrast is between two kinds of cognition: intuitions (which are fast and usually affectively laden) and reasoning (which is slow, cool, and less motivating).
The entire article can be found at: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html
Here is what the quotation, above, translated into Jung speak by me, expresses; that the “archetypes” are activated immediately, and then consciousness comes into action to fashion a reason for our response.
IMO Haidt’s work though not based on any Jungian concepts, demonstrates the validity of some of those very concepts. And, further, it advances the ideas of Matt, myself and some others here about relating Jung’s ideas and concepts to evolutionary psychology, neurobiology and the like. Jung’s ideas and concepts seem to have strong correlation to the latest thinking in these areas. In an email to me Haidt wrote:
I think the evolved, innate, yet underspecified intuitions I'm talking about are easily assimilable into a jungian framework.
Haidt uses the term "intuition," which in Jung's system is a function of consciousness, where Jungian's would use "instinct."
Jon Haidt’s homepage is: http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/ The three “Major Articles” are all worth reading, and I urge you to read them. And I want you encourage you to view the video of Haidt’s lecture given at the New Yorker’s “Morality 2012" Conference: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt Where, among other interesting things, Haidt humorously argues that liberalism is caused by humidity. (-)howdy(-)
I am very encouraged by Haidt’s writings and their relation to Jung. I ask my fellow-posters here to expand and amplify the correlation to Jung. Unless I am wrong I believe one of reasons Matt, et al established this site was to demonstrate how Jung to relates to the latest research in the newest fields.