Intuition is a form of knowledge that appears in consciousness without obvious deliberation. Intuition is often referred to as a “gut feeling,” as it seems to arise fully formed from some deep inner part of ourselves. In fact, intuition is the product of brain processing, that automatically compares swiftly perceived elements of current experience with past experience and knowledge, and they are delivered to awareness with considerable emotional certainty.
In more recent psychology, intuition can encompass the ability to know valid solutions to problems and decision making. For example, the recognition primed decision (RPD) model explains how people can make relatively fast decisions without having to compare options. Gary Klein found that under time pressure, high stakes, and changing parameters, experts used their base of experience to identify similar situations and intuitively choose feasible solutions. Thus, the RPD model is a blend of intuition and analysis, intuition is the pattern-matching process that quickly suggests possible courses of action. The analysis is the mental simulation, a conscious and deliberate review of the courses of action.
Intuition is often misinterpreted as instinct and its reliability is considered to be dependent on past knowledge and occurrences in a specific area. For example, someone who has had more experiences with children will tend to have a better instinct about what they should do in certain situations with them. This is not to say that one with a great amount of experience is always going to have an accurate intuition.
Intuitive abilities were quantitatively tested at Yale University in the 1970s. While studying nonverbal communication, researchers noted that some subjects were able to read nonverbal facial cues before reinforcement occurred. In employing a similar design, they noted that highly intuitive subjects made decisions quickly but could not identify their rationale. Their level of accuracy, however, did not differ from that of non-intuitive subjects.
According to the works of Daniel Kahneman, intuition is the ability to automatically generate solutions without long logical arguments or evidence.
Our intuition isn’t always right but we can often trust it. Human survival depends on avoiding danger so intuition may be helpful in some instances. My intuition helped me in a lot of situations. For example, I know when someone -especially the people that I’m closer to- is lying to me.
Did you know that you can become more intuitive? There are a few written books about this subject. Here is a shortlist of them:
1. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – Malcolm Gladwell 2. Educating Intuition – Robin Hogarth
3. The Myth of Experience: Why We Learn the Wrong Lessons, and Ways to Correct Them – Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth
4. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 5. Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions – Gerd Gigerenzer
6. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious – Gerd Gigerenzer 7. Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
What are your thoughts on intuition? Has your intuition ever been useful? If yes, when and how? I can't wait to read your stories.
Editor- Alexia Popescu
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