Ask any effective individual how they make choices, and they’re bound to mention possessing followed and trusted their ‘gut feelings’ at pivotal points in their life. Nevertheless in Western civilization, there is a tendency to dismiss intuition as emotional and therefore irrational, alternatively embracing the conscious evaluation of hard information as the only trustworthy method of generating essential choices.
But recent science has caught up with what our ancestors learned thousands of years ago – intuition can be an incredibly dependable method and ignoring one’s instincts can have catastrophic outcomes!
Info Overload
The human brain is consistently bombarded with sensory data. So much so that managing all of this information at a conscious level simply isn’t feasible. As a result, the brain is consistently taking shortcuts when processing and interpreting millions of pieces of sensory input. Especially, dopamine neurons in the mid-brain perform a constant series of sub-conscious analysis, looking for recognizable patterns in the information, so that it can interpret and anticipate. The approach basically breaks down to a model of if ‘A’ occurs, then ‘B’ is likely to take place.
Thin Slicing and the Adaptive Unconscious
This process, which author Malcolm Gladwell describes in his book BLINK as “thin-slicing,” allows the brain to make lightning-quickly analysis at a sub-conscious level, requiring surprisingly little details. Cognitive Psychologists refer to this process as the adaptive unconscious, an effortless sub-conscious approach that happens so swiftly, that we’re not even conscious of its existence.
So, how does our adaptive unconscious guide our behavior? Summarized unconscious data is essentially sent to the ‘surface’ (our conscious thoughts) in the form of feelings. Consider of it this way every feeling is a Coles Notes of a subconscious library of information, which is why our primordial ancestors learned to trust their feelings/instincts in a world filled with danger. It was this instinctive or intuitive approach that allowed the cave dweller to sense the presence of a predatory threat, extended just before becoming consciously aware keynote speaker of it (which likely would have been also late to respond to).
Intuition Can Be a Rear View Mirror
Why is it then that as civilization developed, man tended to drift away from instinctive selection-producing, favouring a far more conscious, methodical method? For a single, conscious evaluation is easier to rationalize to other individuals when it comes to accountability. But much more importantly, instincts are just not constantly reliable.
The problem stems from the very nature of how our brain subconsciously processes data. Utilizing the mid-brain model previously described (if ‘A’ occurs, then ‘B’ is probably to happen’) with no the presence of new data, the evaluation will be primarily based completely upon prior knowledge. In other words, in the previous, when ‘A’ occurred ‘B’ was most likely to take place. Introduce new conditions, and it is a recipe for disaster.
This is the most frequent purpose for instinctive or intuitive selection-making failure new choices created on the basis of old details, with no taking into consideration how situations might have changed. A rapid examination of history shows that several decisions with catastrophic ramifications had been produced in this manner. The bottom-line: intuitive selection-generating is only reliable when circumstances stay fairly unchanged.
Hybrid Decision-Making
The solution? A hybrid strategy to selection-producing. Eric Samuels is a keynote speaker who’s presentation “Choices, Decisions: The Art, Science & Magic Of Decision-Making,” examines numerous aspects of the selection-producing process. A single of Samuels’ conclusions is that important decisions should be produced employing both conscious analysis and subconscious intuition. “When faced with an crucial and challenging choice, take the time to study the situation, consciously gathering all accessible information. Then walk away and do something unrelated. This will permit your subconscious mind to process all of the information, and come up with a remedy that employs all of your analytical abilities, as nicely as your intuitive abilities. Will it be the right decision? Nothing guarantees that, but it will be the very best choice you are capable of making!”
References:
Eric Samuels. www.MagicMotivation.com
Malcolm Gladwell. Blink (TW Group: 2005)
keynote speaker