The rationale for intuition in science and the conditions that can enhance intuition.

 

Introduction:

                            When we are preparing to perform a specific work in a specific subject, we experience a certain type of expectation in daily life. Intuition is the ability to know right away whether or not something you are doing is appropriate. Another example is when you notice someone else's face displaying friendliness or fear. It's only a hunch; you have no idea why you feel that way. Intuition is really helpful to us in our life, it gives us the sense that whether this thing is going in our favor or not. Intuition does play a very important role in our life because we can not always think rationally and logically all the time because it drains so much of our brain energy. In this article, you will get a deeper insight into what intuition actually is. How is it created? What is the neuroscience behind it? And what are the factors that affect intuition? And In the end, how does our mood influence our intuitive accuracy?

What is intuition actually?

                           According to Collin's dictionary, the definition of intuition says that: "the direct knowing or learning of something without the conscious use of reasoning; immediate understanding.”                           

                          There is no logic in intuition. It cannot be conveyed or explained as the outcome of a series of carefully thought-out steps. Instead, the procedure feels natural, almost instinctive, despite being founded on fundamental information. Though rapid and generally helpful, intuition is not always completely correct. The subconscious mind makes an effort to identify, interpret, and apply thought patterns that are based on prior knowledge and the best guess.

                         Intuition paradoxically feels unknown. After all, you can't explain the reasoning behind an impulsive choice that strikes you without warning. It simply occurs.

                         Hogarth says: “The essence of intuition or intuitive responses is that they are reached with little apparent effort, and typically without conscious awareness. They involve little or no conscious deliberation.”

The basis for gut instinct in science:

                    Contrary to popular assumption, intuition has a strong brain foundation. For a good reason, scientists refer to the stomach as the “second brain”. Your entire digestive tract is illuminated by a massive neural network made up of 100 million neurons. The fact that there are more neurons in the stomach than in the spinal cord indicates the amazing processing power of the digestive system.

 When you make a choice based on intuition, your brain and gut collaborate to quickly evaluate all of your memories, past experiences, individual requirements, and preference, and then you choose the course of action that is best given the circumstances. In this way, leaders must regard intuition as a type of emotional and experienced data.

How does this intuition occur in our brain?

                           According to research, the brain functions as a sizable predictive computer that constantly predicts what will happen by comparing incoming sensory information and present experiences to knowledge and memories of past events. This is explained in the "predictive processing framework," as it is known to scientists.

So, this shows that our brain is always prepared to deal with the circumstance which happens to us and is about to happen, and if any kind of uncertain thing happens the brain just upgrades its models. Current experience and previous models—which are founded on former experience—are instantly and unconsciously matched. When your brain detects a significant fit or mismatch (between the cognitive model and the present experience), intuitions develop but are not yet conscious of you.

The brain can compare the current experience to more knowledge when you have a lot of expertise in a certain area. Your intuition is strengthened as a result. This implies that similar to creativity, intuition can truly get better with practice.

Like when you drive every day to work you without having conscious awareness knows where to take a turn. These small intuitions are formed and arise in your brain in response to the event and it strengthens as you get to experience the same thing repeatedly.

There is another example, for instance, you are talking to a person via text and if the other person’s mood is not good or if he or she is sad you will get an intuition that the other person is not feeling good. This intuition comes to you when you are talking to them for a while and you better know the other person. Basically, your intuitive muscles grew stronger with time and experience.

How Intuition is created?

                        Your brain is continuously evaluating and absorbing data, some of which you do consciously and others of which it does completely unconsciously. The obtained data is kept in the form of "information patterns." Once it leaves your short-term memory, this knowledge can either be forgotten or sent further down the memory highway to your long-term memory storage. Sometimes it’s not easy to gather all the information which is in your long-term memory but this doesn’t signify that you’ve completely forgotten all the information. Sometimes this information is retrieved without your conscious awareness. And this information gives you an intuition or in other words a gut feeling for a particular event.

However, if someone asks you for proof and evidence after you make a decision simply based on intuition (or gut feeling), you might not be able to provide it. Remember that pattern matching and intuition occur outside of your consciousness, so you might find yourself unable to explain WHY you felt a certain way but still have a sensation that something wasn't right. This thing happens sometimes with us like when we have to choose between two tasks of equal importance and intuitively choose one, and if after competing somebody asks us why did you pick that task first you were like no answer because we didn’t pick that task rationally you just pick that up intuitively and you don’t have any evidence to prove it.

Intuition is basically created when we experience certain things. Intuition in a particular domain arises when we have a better experience in that particular domain. Like if we just ask a photographer to just form an estimate of the everyday sales of a coffee shop he will probably not form an estimate because he never has experienced that thing but he will easily form an intuition regarding any topic related to photography. So the main basic thing for the creation of intuition is the basic know-how and experience of that particular thing.

Difference between Intuitive and Rational Judgment:

                       In an intuitive judgment, the brain gives a signal either in favor or against a certain thing without any logical reason but in the case of rational judgment, our brain after analysis picks the one thing which makes the best logic to him, at the same time it also keeps the uncertainty in mind and the chances that this thing might go in the other direction other than expected.

Intuitive judgment and radical judgment both go hand in hand in our daily life. We just can’t solely rely on rational judgments and not everyone at every time has the ability to think radically because if we think too radically, we would be unable to form conclusions or make decisions. This logical thinking sometimes puts us into analysis paralysis and sometimes the pros and cons of two things are just so close that you are unable to choose between them. So, here comes the place for your intuition, which in this type of scenario would give you a gut feeling about a thing.

 Let’s say you are investing in a stock and rationally you have researched a lot about it and collected all of its histories, market capitalization, future predictions, etc. But if you think too rationally then your brain also says that there is a chance that this company might not perform according to expectations in the future due to some uncertain circumstances and you might get confused about whether investing in this stock is a good decision or not. But here your intuition plays a role and helps you to support that particular stock or not by giving you the gut feeling of its safety or not.

Perhaps surprisingly, a large number of the most powerful executives in the world acknowledge that they frequently rely more on intuition than on conscious, logical thought when making judgments. A sample of 36 CEOs was used, and 85% of them agreed that their decision-making process was mostly based on intuition and rules of thumb (ROTs) (Maidique, 2014). Intuitions are basically used by every person even if that person is a professional in a particular domain or just a beginner.

How does intuition help us?

                   This particular study demonstrated how our brain's intuitive portion recognizes the correct response before our more analytical portion does.                                      

Participants in this study played a card game that, unknown to them, was rigged from the start. Two decks of cards were available for the participants to select from. One was set up to offer big winnings, followed by big losses. Small gains, but barely any losses, in the other.

 After 50 cards, the players said they got a feeling about which deck was more secure. They were able to describe the differences between the two decks after 80. But this is where things get interesting; after just 10 cards, they began to perspire anytime they took from the perilous deck. Around that time, participants began to favor the safer deck, although they were not consciously aware of it. Therefore, the subjects' intuition helped them make a better decision before their analytical section of the brain was aware of what was happening.

The University of South Wales conducted research that found nonconscious information can improve choice accuracy, speed, and confidence while also confirming that intuition greatly aids decision-making. So, intuition does help us in getting better at developing different skill sets by giving us a gut instinct as we are getting better at that thing.

The link between Creativity and intuition:

                         Fundamentally, intuition and creativity are interchangeable and interdependent. They exhibit the highest degrees of intelligence that can be applied to any aptitude. Even on its own, creativity demands a lot of effort. Intuition requires less energy to utilize than information that requires conscious attempts, therefore when we allow our intuitions to function, we use more inspiration than perspiration.

  Most of the time, when creators honor their instincts by posing strange and outrageous questions, fresh ideas are truly born. They are actually strengthening their intuitive muscles and attempting to improve the already present ones when they pose queries of this nature.

 Consider a scenario in which we are developing a new product and concentrating on its marketing. In addition to carefully considering all the market statistics, the psychology of attractiveness, etc., we also work with the aid of our intuition. Asking silly or irrelevant questions will help us tune into our intuition. We are actually developing our intuition by doing this.

Influence of mood on intuitive accuracy:

Some researchers looked at how individuals' moods affected their intuitive accuracy. By asking individuals to reflect on positive experiences from their lives, some participants' moods were made happier, whereas others' moods were made sadder. Compared to depressed participants, happy people made intuitive assessments that were more correct. Therefore, it is clearly demonstrated that a happy mood influences our system 1 and makes it easier for us to access our intuition. It is also proven that anytime we are unhappy or angry, we lose touch with our intuition.  

                

Conclusion:

                   We have frequently heard that you shouldn't rely on your intuition. People frequently claim that you should use rationality while making decisions and that gut feelings are frequently incorrect. But these kinds of claims are untrue since intuition is a product of our prior experiences and memories that are stored in our brains but are not consciously known to us and this does not mean, however, that we do not have those memories. The unconscious memory in our brains that provides us with the signal for a specific occurrence is actually what we see as intuitive knowledge. And it's also not a good idea to rely solely on your intuition or to ignore it totally. Numerous other elements, like exposure to new things and learning new things about ourselves in life, can also aid in developing our intuitive muscles. Our mood can also influence how effective our intuition is.