How your intuition can guide you towards better decisions

A gut feeling. An inner voice. A flash of inspiration. An inner knowing. An inkling. A sixth sense. All terms that attempt to capture something neuroscience, psychology and philosophy have all failed to clearly define: intuition.

Rather than describing what intuition is, it’s easier to describe what it’s like. It’s fast, outside of our conscious awareness and comes easily to us. Everyone relies on it in day-to-day life. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to deal with the thousands of decisions we make each day.

Artists and researchers are especially fond of using their intuition as a source of guidance and inspiration. German scientific explorer Alexander von Humboldt once remarked that knowledge is always preceded by early intuition. In a similar vein, Albert Einstein said: «I believe in intuition and inspiration. Sometimes, I feel that I’m right. I don’t know that I am.» So, it’d appear intuition is a sort of «felt» knowledge. Incidentally, Einstein also described intuition as a «sacred gift», labelling the rational mind a «faithful servant». He added that while society honours the servant, it’s «forgotten» the gift.

If we’re being honest, don’t the majority of us give our rational mind more credit? Don’t we all think of that feeling randomly signalling what decision we should make as lesser? To this day, gut feelings have a bad rep, with some people even putting them in the same category as spirituality and mysticism. There’s no logical way to understand them, the reasons behind our unconscious intelligence remaining mysteriously out of reach. Hidden somewhere in the depths of the human brain.

Intuition can also be mistaken

To be fair, intuition can’t always be trusted. This is well illustrated by a much-repeated, famous experiment known as «the bat and ball problem». Participants were asked the following question: a bat and ball cost 1.10 dollars altogether, and the bat costs 1 dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

More than 80 per cent of respondents gave a spontaneous, intuitive answer: that the ball cost 10 cents. However, this is incorrect. The right answer is, in fact, 5 cents. A significant number of top-performing students also got it wrong, with 50 per cent intuitively going for 10 cents. The reason? Our gut doesn’t do mathematical calculations – it makes rough guesses.

And yes, a variety of explainable cognitive distortions such as the anchoring effect (article in German) influence human intuition and lead to mistaken thinking. All the more reason for Team Rational to dismiss gut feelings. In his book «Thinking, fast and slow», Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman attempts to explain why we’re so prone to making these mistakes. He says our brain is divided into two systems that control processes differently. The first system – our intuition – acts quickly, automatically and independent of rules. Meanwhile, the second system – our rationality – is exactly the opposite. It works in a slow, rules-based way.

Non-fiction

EUR16,–

Fast thinking, slow thinking

German, Daniel Kahneman

5

Non-fiction

EUR16,–

Fast thinking, slow thinking

German, Daniel Kahneman

5

Gut feelings aren’t random, they’re based on experience

Human beings, however, probably aren’t that straightforward after all. Researchers across disciplines have now concluded that these two systems aren’t separate. In fact, «pure» reason is always coloured by intuitive judgement. These days, intuition has improved its reputation, at least in scientific circles.

Describing how people make decisions, neuroscientist Friederike Fabritius writes on her blog: «Most of us plan, analyse, and solve problems using the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain just behind our forehead. Decisions made here are relatively slow, limited and conscious.»

According to experts, intuition involves the activation of a different part of the brain – an area known as the basal ganglia: «Intuition (…) goes deeper into the brain, where years of accumulated knowledge are stored. When a decision is called for, the key data points are wired together without our awareness; that is, until the conclusion suddenly bursts into our consciousness, delivering the answer.»

In a social media post, Fabritius emphasises that intuitive decisions «aren’t random and don’t signify a lack of skill.» On the contrary:

Since intuition is «felt» knowledge, some people physically feel it when a reason-based decision goes against their gut. This might involve their implicit memory causing tension in the stomach, shoulder or chest (article in German).

What makes your intuition sharper

The magic word here is experience. Intuition accesses knowledge stored in the brain, doing so unconsciously in a matter of seconds. This is why intuition works best when someone has a lot of experience on the topic they have to make a decision about. An experiment with golfers demonstrated that when experienced players were given just three seconds to think about their shot, they hit better than when they were given longer to think about it. For beginner golfers, on the other hand, the opposite was true. When given only three seconds for a putt, they were worse at hitting the ball.

In business, half of all decisions are based on gut instinct

One of the most influential advocates of intuition (and critics of Kahneman’s theory) is Gerd Gigerenzer, a German psychologist and risk researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. His book Gut Decisions was voted Science Book of the Year in Switzerland.

Reference books

Gut decisions

German, Gerd Gigerenzer, 2021

Reference books

Gut decisions

German, Gerd Gigerenzer, 2021

His studies, including those on managers at DAX companies, have revealed that highly experienced people often make decisions based on gut instinct. That’s despite the fact that, unlike in our personal lives, intuition doesn’t have a particularly good reputation in the workplace. Participants in the study also used heuristics, i.e. «mental strategies, rules of thumb or shortcuts» in their decision-making. At the same time, they ignored most of the information they had to hand. Instead of analysing and weighing up the data rationally, managers listened to their inner voice.

Gigerenzer managed to prove that in business, 1 in 2 decisions on average are made based on gut instinct. At the same time, decision-makers try to hide the gut-instinct element of their decisions – precisely because they’re so impossible to justify. If things go wrong in the event of a gut decision, the manager ends up looking bad.

When should you use your intuition more often?

Your gut instinct isn’t infallible. That being said, it’s worth questioning the three main misconceptions about your inner voice. Here are the mistakes Gigerenzer says people make about intuition:

• Conscious thought is always superior to intuition. False
• Complex problems always need complex solutions. False
• More information and more time are always better. False (see golfer example)

So, when should you use heuristics, the principles intuition is based on? And when is it better to use statistics and logic to weigh and calculate risks before taking a leap? Gigerenzer says: «Intuition is the art of focusing on the right thing – on the essentials – and ignoring everything else.» The more experience you have in a given area, the better this works.

According to Gigerenzer, this readiness to embrace simplicity isn’t always welcome in the workplace. There, decisions an individual might have a good intuition for are often stifled or kicked into the long grass. Gigerenzer goes on to say that defensive decisions like this don’t always result in the better solution. Instead of defensive tactics, he recommends mustering the courage to make mistakes. In the end, it’s all about a two-pronged approach. You need good intuition, but you also need a good way of assessing it.

Want to learn to trust your gut and use it to help you make decisions? Then you’ll have to be brave and be able to admit your mistakes.