Intuition is Not Pseudoscience, Say Researchers

I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. Because face it, folks, we are a divided nation. Not between Democrats or Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No, we are divided by those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart...”
~ Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report

From an anecdotal perspective, nearly everyone has as some point in their life felt compelled to do something for a reason they couldn’t quite define that turned out to be a smart move. Sometimes it’s even an instantaneous response to something that wouldn’t normally elicit such a reaction, but ends up being a good thing. Maybe you just get a bad feeling about someone without knowing why and find out later that they’ve got a violent temper. Or maybe you make a snap judgment about working with a particular individual because there’s just “something” about them that makes you think they’ll be successful. You could write it off as a lucky guess, since not every intuition turns out to be true. But whatever the case may be, researchers at Leeds say these “feelings” are likely as real and valuable as our logical deductions, and that we should therefore take our “hunches” more seriously

Historically, however, scientists have ridiculed the concept of intuition. They put it in the same camp as parapsychology, phrenology and other phenomenon considered to be ‘pseudoscientific’. The study of intuition has also commonly been considered a spiritual discipline lacking any real scientific weight. However, new research is showing that intuition goes a lot deeper than we might have thought. In fact, maybe Stephen Colbert’s character on The Colbert Report is right; thinking with your gut may be as valid as thinking with your brain. In any case, intuition is more than just a hunch, according to a new Leeds University study.

Intuition is the result of the way our brains store, process and retrieve information on a subconscious level says Professor Gerard Hodgkinson of the Centre for Organizational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School. According to his research, intuition is a real psychological phenomenon which needs further study to help us harness its potential.

Through analysis of a wide range of research papers examining the phenomenon, the researchers concluded that intuition is the brain quickly drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision on a non-conscious level. In other words, it happens so fast that we’re not aware that the intuition actually stemmed from a supercharged burst of logical thinking.

“People usually experience true intuition when they are under severe time pressure or in a situation of information overload or acute danger, where conscious analysis of the situation may be difficult or impossible,” says Hodgkinson.

Hodgkinson cites the recorded case of a Formula One driver who braked sharply when nearing a hairpin bend without knowing why he was doing so. As a result, the driver avoided hitting a pile-up of cars on the track ahead, which undoubtedly saved his life.

“The driver couldn’t explain why he felt he should stop, but the urge was much stronger than his desire to win the race,” explains Professor Hodgkinson. “The driver underwent forensic analysis by psychologists afterwards, where he was shown a video to mentally relive the event. In hindsight he realized that the crowd, which would have normally been cheering him on, wasn’t looking at him coming up to the bend but was looking the other way in a static, frozen way. That was the cue. He didn’t consciously process this, but he knew something was wrong and stopped in time.”

The research published in the current issue of the British Journal of Psychology, suggests that intuitive experiences are based on the instantaneous evaluation of such internal and external cues – but does not speculate on whether intuitive decisions are necessarily the best ones. However, if intuition is anything like it’s slower counterpart known as “logic”, then it is not infallible as amply demonstrated by men like George W. Bush, who often say they are “going with their gut” as opposed to thinking the matter through. As with all things, there is such a thing as too much of good thing. Of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean it’s useless either.

“Humans clearly need both conscious and non-conscious thought processes,” he adds. “But it’s likely that neither is intrinsically ‘better’ than the other.”

Hodgkinson, who is a chartered occupational psychologist, is interested in studying how intuition works within a business framework, where executives and managers often claim to use intuition over deliberate analysis when a swift decision is called for.

“We’d like to identify when business people choose to switch from one mode to the other and why – and also analyze when their decision is the correct one. By understanding this phenomenon, we could then help organizations to harness and hone intuitive skills in their executives and managers.”

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