Psychologists have come to the conclusion that believing in the power of one's own "sixth sense" does not help people solve problems that require an intuitive approach.
A 2016 study by American psychologists showed that intuitive "insights" play an important role in solving many problems. In particular, they help to process visual information - for example, to correctly perceive noisy images.
However, a new study from the University of Kent demonstrates that many people overestimate the power of their intuition. The tests involved 400 people: 325 British students and 75 volunteers from the United Kingdom and the United States. Before the start of the test, the participants completed several questionnaires that assessed their perception of their own intuition. They had to evaluate their attitude towards statements such as "In most cases, it makes sense to rely entirely on feelings when making a decision" or "I am convinced that I trust my judgments."
Then the participants in the work solved problems that are traditionally considered to require an intuitive approach. The set of tasks was developed in the 1980s to investigate implicit learning, a process in which learning occurs regardless of whether the subject is aware of what he is learning. Participants had to intuitively find associations between photographs of people, not knowing the rules by which connections were built. After that, the participants answered several questions about how they came to the solution of the problem: with the participation of the "sixth sense" or not.
Above - the original form of the experiment (the participant is looking for connections between letters), below - new modification with photos instead of letters, Social Psychological and Personality Science
It turned out that those who initially described themselves as a person with developed intuition and relied on it in the process of work coped with the task no better than other participants in the study.
Scientists believe that intuition can be much more important in the decisions that professionals in a particular field make based on their experience. However, for non-specialists, a high assessment of their own intuition turned out to be useless.
The work was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
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Natalia Pelezneva