How Do You Trust Your Intuition?

Trust Your Intuition

Wikipedia says "intuition is apparent ability to acquire knowledge without a clear inference or reasoning process". The Oxford English Dictionary calls it "the immediate apprehension of an object by the mind without the intervention of any reasoning process". My high school psychology teacher suggested we not use the word as a blanket definition to describe an action or course of action that we did not have an adequate or provable explanation for.




Whatever the case, intuition is a subject that has been getting more press lately. Sharon Kirkey of Ottowacitizen.com wrote on Friday March, 7 about how The British Journal of Psychology recently wrote "The concept of intuition has, until recently, received scant scholarly attention within and beyond the psychological sciences,.... Presently, the literature on intuition is conceptually underdeveloped and dispersed across a range of domains of application, from education, to management, to health." They attempt to clarify and distinguish intuition from insight and another word my psychology teacher urged us to stay away from "instinct". Which was in his estimation just another way to say I don't know why that happens. Better to just admit you don't know why that happens. They also examined "recent evidence from the field of social cognitive neuroscience that identifies the potential neural correlates of these separate systems and conclude by identifying a number of theoretical and methodological challenges associated with the valid and reliable assessment of intuition as a basis for future research in this burgeoning field of inquiry." Wow! Say that three times fast.




Lead author Gerald Hodgkinson, a professor of organizational behaviour and strategic management and head of the Centre for Organizational Strategy, Learning and Change at The University of Leeds says "Everything just points to the fact that intuition is a concept that has come of its time." He and his co-writers conclude that intuition is a result of the way our brains process information when faced with serious time pressures, information overload and potentially hazardous situations in which "they don't have the luxury to be able to deliberate and gather all the facts...It could also occur in situations where the facts are incomplete, and so people have to work with what they've got."
He cites the recorded case of a Formula One driver who braked sharply when nearing a hairpin bend without knowing why - and as a result avoided hitting a pile-up of cars on the track ahead, undoubtedly saving 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 realised 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."