Intuition...Some people want to sharpen it, some want to trust it more and some feel disconnected from it. But what exactly is intuition? Is is something mystical and magical? Or is it something that can be easily explained by scientists?
I've been musing about intuition quite a lot recently. And because I've been focusing on it, I'm noticing more and more references to it (my reticular activator, which decides what we become conscious of, brings references to intuition more and more into my awareness).
In Eastern spirituality, including Yoga, the sixth or 'third eye' chakra symbolises intuitive insight and wisdom. It represents the energies of conscious and unconscious psychological forces and gives us the ability to see something before it manifests.
But what exactly are intuitive insights and where do they come from? Do they depend on psychic ability or not? These questions really piqued my curiosity.
What inferences am I and others making when we refer to intuition?
I decided to check it out.Let's start with some quotes from eminent scientists:
'The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.’ - Albert Einstein (German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity).
'Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside the province of reason ' - Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist).
'It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.’ - Henri Poincare (French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer and philosopher of science).
'I’m saying that we should trust our intuition. I believe that the principles of universal evolution are revealed to us through intuition. And I think that if we combine our intuition and our reason, we can respond in an evolutionary sound way to our problems.’ - Jonas Salk (American medical researcher and virologist who discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine).
These quotes all suggest that there is something mysterious about intuition.
My experience of intuition is similar - an idea or solution to a problem just comes to me and I don't know exactly how or where it has come from. What about you? How do you experience intuition?
We are all intuitive though some people have more finely tuned intuition than others.
And then there is the question of whether we all mean the same thing when we refer to intuition. My experience coaching business owners and executives who want to identify their life purpose and align with it for greater life fulfilment and well-being suggests that we don't.
Researchers, Lakoff and Johnson, state that 'in all aspects of life...we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors, drawing inferences and making plans based on how we structure our experiences consciously and unconsciously by means of metaphors.
I'm mentioning metaphors because research by Pollio et al. (1977) has shown that we use approximately 6 metaphors per minute. My premise is that it's likely that we use different metaphors to represent intuition; a common metaphor that's used is 'gut-feelings', which can mean different things to different people. Intuition is also referred to as the 'sixth sense', 'instinct', 'hunches'...
So, what's the definition of intuition?
Wikipedia says this:
“Intuition, a phenomenon of the mind, describes the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason .
[2]The word "intuition" comes from the Latin verb intueri translated as consider or from late middle English “template". [3] Intuition is often interpreted with varied meaning from intuition being glimpses of greater knowledge [4] to only a function of mind ; however, processes by which and why they happen typically remain mostly unknown to the thinker, as opposed to the view of rational thinking.”The Oxford English Dictionary's definition is:
“The ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning” or “A thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.”
What do cognitive scientists and others say about intuition.
Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow, writing about the intuition of experts, quotes Herbert Simon's (American political scientist, economist, sociologist, psychologist, and computer scientist) definition of intuition as where:
“The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.”
This demystifies the magical component in intuition. Intuition, it seems, boils down to normal everyday experiences of memory. We store information in memory that's inherited from our ancestors, our own experiences, emotional learning, learned expertise and practise. When this information is accessed quickly and automatically, voilà, we call it intuition.
Psychologists tell us that there are two systems in the mind, System 1 which is involuntary, automatic, fast and represents what we call intuition and System 2, the conscious mind that reasons, makes choices/decisions, concentrates and represents self-control and intelligence.
We tend to identify with System 2 believing that it's making the decisions. But in reality, most of the time, System 1 is acting on its own, with little or no effort and without you being aware of it. It's System 1 that decides which thoughts or associations come to mind and what you feel about something.
All of this happens automatically. You cannot switch System 1 off, you can't stop it, yet you often base your decisions on it.
Kahneman describes System 2 as lazy. The operations of System 2 require attention. It is slow, thinks deliberately and people often don't like System 2 because it requires hard work.
What's this got to do with intuition?
The point is that intuition is associated with System 1, which is automatic and can't be turned off at will. System 1's decisions are based on mental associations and pattern recognition from information stored away in memory. So the argument is that intuitive thoughts are actually based on the recognition processes in the brain and not magic.
Kahneman concludes that 'the mystery of knowing without knowing is not a distinctive feature of intuition; it is the norm of mental life.”
If what's stored in memory determines the accuracy of intuition and intuition is an automatic System 1 construct, to what extent can we trust intuition?
Well, according to researchers, intuitive errors can occur because System 1 is automatic and based on the information available in memory. And the information available in memory and the processing that takes place is not singular or linear.
Daniel Dennett (American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist) talking about the stream of consciousness states that there is no single stream of consciousness and instead the brain actually produces multiple simultaneous interpretations of experiences '...specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating multiple drafts as they go.” And that:
“At any point in time there are multiple drafts of narrative fragments at various stages of editing in various places in the brain. While some of the contents in these drafts will make their brief contributions and fade without further effect – and some will make no contribution at all – others will persist to play a variety of roles in the further modulation of internal state and behaviour and a few will even persist to the point of making their presence known through press releases issues in the form of verbal behaviour.”
As James Lawley and Penny Tompkins point out in their article on “Self-Nudging”, the multiple drafts model suggests that until we take action, our behaviour can go in a number of directions and depends on what is considered to be most salient.
So the reliability of intuition depends on the quality of the information in memory, the associations that System 1 makes and what we infer or make up about the intuitive thought. And also on which 'drafts' become press releases. Studies also show that your brain makes up its mind about what it is going to do next before it even tells you. We are not as in control of our consciousness as we believe.
When therefore can you trust your intuitions?
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The more experience you have in a particular domain, the more reliable your intuitions because they arise out of the stored tapestry of information that reflects the patterns of your experience. It can take up to 10 years to develop the domain-specific expertise, acquired from repetition and feedback, to develop accurate intuitive judgements. You still need to exercise caution, however. Even if you are an expert, it's prudent to test out your hunches and intuitive hits because you could easily have pulled up the wrong web of associations in your brain and made an incorrect judgement.
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Check whether the environment relating to your intuitive thought is sufficiently regular, orderly and predictable, and whether you or the 'expert' individual has had enough experience to learn this environment. When these conditions are met, you can trust your own or someone else's intuition.
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If a formula/algorithm is available use it rather than rely on intuition - hundreds of studies have shown that wherever we have sufficient information to create an algorithm, it will perform better than most people. Why? Because clear decision rules, objective measurements and reams of data are available that can be easily analysed. In these circumstances a computer will perform better than humans.
When your brain is faced with large volumes of data and/or an unpredictable situation that lacks regularity in the environment, your automatic System 1 often produces quick answers to difficult questions using mental shortcuts and automatic substitutions to make a judgement. As you do not know the origin of the judgement (it's automatic) these shortcuts or heuristics may result in false conclusions - your associative memory can generate subjectively compelling intuitions that are wrong.
Kahneman cautions:
“In the absence of valid cues, intuitive “hits” are due to luck or to lies. If you find this conclusion surprising, you still have a lingering belief that intuition is magic...intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment” and “an opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged practice.”
