Psychologists at the School of Psychological Science at Tel Aviv University have found that decisions based on instinct produce unexpectedly positive results.
According to the work of researchers, the human brain has the innate ability to find the best solution with lightning speed.
How does intuition work?
Simple decisions, such as which product to choose on the supermarket shelf, and more complex ones, such as when a surgeon needs to make a quick decision during an operation, are weighed in our brains with the help of pros and cons.
To determine the accuracy of instinctive decisions, scientists tracked participants as they performed decision tasks. The volunteers were asked to keep an eye on a computer screen that was divided into two columns, left and right. A sequence of pairs of numbers quickly appeared in each column. All numbers from each column were counted as a group and represented the profit in the stock market. Each participant had to decide which of the two groups of numbers had the highest average.
Since the numbers changed every second, the private traders did not have time to count or remember. The only thing they could rely on was intuitive arithmetic.
Surprising as it may seem, intuition helped them calculate various values very quickly.
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The researchers found that accuracy increased with the amount of data presented to the participants. When they were shown 6 pairs of numbers, people chose exactly 65 percent of the time. When they were shown 24 pairs of numbers, the accuracy improved to 90 percent.
Thus, the human brain is intuitively able to collect large amounts of pieces of information and decide their overall meaning.