When the famous scientist Albert Einstein was asked about the origin of his genius, he did not hesitate to answer. He said that I believe in discovery and inspiration. Sometimes I think I'm fine even though I don't know if I'm fine at the moment.'
He told the Saturday Evening Post in 1929 that it was better to rely on these instincts than to allow them to be rejected outright, that they might be checked later.
These physicists are not the only ones to believe in this philosophy. This was apparently also a big part of Coco Chanel's strategy. "Fashion is in the air, it is born from the air," said Coco. And anyone realizes it.
You may recognize this feeling yourself. Whether you're looking for a new apartment, considering a potential new job, or gauging someone's honesty, you have a gut feeling that something is right or wrong for you.
Although the reasons for this may be incomprehensible to you. It may be tempting to think of our gut feeling as some sort of mysterious 'sixth sense, but there is no need to resort to the supernatural to explain discovery or inspiration.
Over the past two decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have made great strides in pinpointing its sources and essential role in our lives.
His research on this has identified the specific situations in which our inspiration or intuition is likely to lead us on the right path and also the situations in which it leads us astray. In this regard, information or knowledge is something that can help us all make better decisions.
Mind in Body
Scientific understanding of intuition begins with a laboratory game called the Iowa Gambling Task. Participants are presented with four decks of cards on a computer screen. Every time they flip a card, they get a monetary reward or pay a penalty.
Two of these decks or card decks offer relatively high rewards, but also carry large penalties, which means they'll deal more damage at some point.
The other two decks offer relatively small rewards but also have small penalties, meaning they are safe choices. Participants are not told which deck will be profitable, but after about 40 tries, many begin to have an idea of which deck will be most profitable for them.
It seems that the subconscious minds of the participants have started to notice patterns of profit and loss. Although they cannot explain why they are making these decisions, except that it is their 'gut feeling'.
Importantly, performance improvements often follow systematic physiological changes upon which participants make their decisions. For example, when they start playing a more dangerous deck, they start to show more stress responses, such as slight changes in heart rate and sweating.
These changes are called 'somatic markers' and appear to act as a warning to prevent the player from making the wrong decision and may be stifling a sense of victimhood.
People without this kind of intuition can face serious problems in real life. For example, some neurological patients are unable to make somatic markers.
Without intuitive guidance, they often suffer from 'analysis paralysis' when asked to make a choice. And when they make a decision, they don't see the inherent dangers in what they are doing.
For example, they may spend all their money on a bad business proposition, especially in situations where others would have a strong instinct to distrust the company. Such observations suggest that our intuitions are an essential part of our decision-making toolkit, and should not be ignored.
Expert eye
It is most effective in lie detection studies as evidence of the importance of intuition. People are more accurate in judging someone's honesty when asked to do so on their instincts than when asked to think and verbalize their reasons. go In other situations the strength of our intuition will depend on the range of our experiences.
The subconscious mind searches for the best answer to our problems from its stored information while we are unable to consciously recall the memories that trigger these feelings.
For example, see the experience of Professor Eric Dean of Rice University in Texas. In 2012, his research team asked students to look at several designer handbags, some of which were genuine and some of which were genuine-looking fakes.
Half of the participants were asked to ignore their inner voices and say things that would determine whether the handbag was real or fake. The rest were told to trust their inner voice.
The researchers also asked participants about their shopping habits and whether they already owned designer items. Participants who adopted an analytic strategy, regardless of their previous experience, performed nearly identically.
However, for the participants who were asked to listen to their inner voice, their experiences played a significant role, which made their decisions better. Indeed, it was found that experts who relied on inner voice performed 20% better than those who relied on analysis alone.
Vinod Vincent, associate professor at Clayton State University in Georgia in the US, led a 2021 study in which participants were presented with sample responses from multiple job applicants and asked to choose the best option.
Some were told to follow their instincts. (They were told that 'their decision should be based on their first impression of the candidates') while others were asked to use deliberation, logic, and analysis. (They were told to 'carefully consider all available information before making a decision, ignoring any first impressions or instinctual choices.')
Undergraduates with no hiring experience were able to determine based on their intuition which candidates stood out, but after applying deliberate scrutiny, the pros and cons of each. By comparison, when they tried to use their intuition, they were generally less accurate.
But this was not true in the case of experts who worked as recruiters. They had very good instincts about which candidate would be the best fit, without having to think through all the different criteria step by step, the more experience they had, the better they were.
“If you're an expert, you'll know all the idioms that make a candidate good at a job, even if it's hard to articulate,” says Vincent. Voices should not replace analytical thinking, and we should also be aware of the fact that they can sometimes be influenced by unconscious biases, such as racism, ageism, or sexism. Overall, their research confirms that an expert's intuitive feelings can be important sources of information and play an important role in the decision-making process.
Don't overthink it
Intuitive decision-making power can be especially important when processing a large and vast amount of complex information that is very difficult to remember accurately.
In these cases, we can benefit from letting our minds wander to some other unrelated activity, while the subconscious mind analyzes the data and makes the decision for us.
In a series of experiments, researchers presented participants with extensive details about a series of apartments. After their own first impressions, some participants were asked to consciously consider and compare different options before making their choice.
The rest were asked to try a series of anagrams, an attempted distraction designed to prevent participants from using their analytical processing to make decisions about apartments.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that participants who thought carefully about their choice were significantly less likely to choose an apartment with more attractive features.
Attempts to analyze different options affected their decision-making ability, leading them to choose the less-favored option. In contrast, those who were distracted by the anagrams had to trust their inner voice, which proved to be more accurate.
While some studies suggest that we can sometimes trust our first impression immediately, there is sometimes a benefit in delaying our judgment by focusing on another activity.
Psychologist Marlene Abadi says that this pause gives the subconscious a chance to form an accurate summary of the complex information in front of it, which can result in more accurate decisions made by the inner voice.
This guidance, she says, can be useful in situations like this when we're forming our own perceptions after being overwhelmed by an overwhelming amount of information.
' This can be useful when you have to buy similar products with similar features, such as a phone, computer, TV, sofa, fridge, or oven.' It might be better to flip the pages.
Emotional intelligence
According to the latest research, how accurate a person's inner voice is may depend on their overall emotional intelligence. And by learning to increase our emotional intelligence (EI), we can increase our intuitive decision-making power.
Experts measure EI through a series of questions that include, for example, the ability to understand other people's facial expressions and predict people's mood changes depending on the situation. Jeremy Yip, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, recently compared people's performance in a gambling game to their emotional intelligence.
While most participants showed signs of stress when they picked 'bad' leaves, those with low emotional intelligence misinterpreted their body's own symptoms.
The apparent stress reaction within athletes with low emotional intelligence prompts them to take more risks that ultimately prove detrimental to them.
They simply fail to perceive this feeling as a warning. "They probably perceive their physical reactions as excitement, so they take more risks," Yip says.
Fortunately, it is possible to train emotional intelligence. Anna Alkozzi, a professor at the University of Arizona in the US, has recently created an online course that trains people to think carefully about how different emotions can be perceived and how to judge sensations such as bodily movements. Can affect performance.
After two sessions per week for three weeks, Alkozzi's participants performed significantly better on tests of emotional intelligence and, in turn, performed better than gamblers. Instead, participants who took an online course on the environment showed no such improvement.
If you want to improve your inner voice, you must first understand your general emotions, what you are feeling, and the source of those feelings. Over time you will more easily know if you are getting a real signal or not.
Your gut feeling will never be foolproof, but practice can make it an important guide. (Courtesy of the BBC)