The well-known psychologist, Nobel laureate D. Kahneman explains, explains when it makes sense to rely on your inner instinct, and when not.
Is our gut feeling the expression of all our wisdom and life experience? Or is it our laziness and prejudice that makes itself felt? Does this contribute to stereotyping and simplifying the perception of the world, or does it simply help us avoid danger before our brains can fully process the threat that has arisen?
These questions are the subject of heated scientific discussions. Malcolm Gladwell gave a fascinating account of our sixth sense in his best-selling book Illumination, and psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman addressed the issue of intuition in Think Slow … Decide Fast from a skeptical perspective.
But while experts argue, others have to make real decisions. How should we behave - ignore our inner voice or do exactly what it tells us? According to Kahneman, it all depends on the context.
Brilliant move or shortcut to nowhere?
According to Kahneman, the main flaw in human intuition is that it relies on practical experience, which is often completely deceiving.
We are trying to understand what is the likelihood of a particular situation, focusing on the number of examples we know in this area. As a result, we greatly overestimate the frequency of very memorable, but in reality extremely rare events, such as, for example, plane crashes. As Kahneman explains, our intuition makes these kinds of mistakes all the time.
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On the other hand, we know that intuition is not useless. If you feel that your wife is angry with you, you'd better head straight to the flower shop. Or consider the case of a veteran firefighter who saves the lives of his crewmen, instinctively knowing that the flames are about to turn deadly. This is the story that Kahneman shared in his book.
So, how do you learn to separate when your inner voice is going to save your life (or your marriage) and when your premonition turns out to be false?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Kahneman gave a simple answer to this difficult question. He made a three-question form. If you can answer “Yes” to each of them, then you should definitely trust your intuition. Otherwise, you might be better off opposing your sixth sense with factual evidence and rigorous reasoning. So, these are the questions:
Is there a pattern in this area that you can identify and study?
Intuition develops from experience, so in order for your inner voice to determine trends and patterns, they really must exist.
What areas of life are regulated by more or less precise laws that allow our brain to develop intuition? In Kahneman's words, "It's a game of chess and marriage."
But, for example, the stock market is too unpredictable area for anyone to understand it using their intuition.
Have you had enough practice in this area?
Again, developed intuition is born from long observation of the environment, which has a certain level of regularity and regularity. Therefore, a developed sixth sense is based on a large amount of practice.
And we are not talking about weeks, but about years and years of experience, like that of the veteran of the fire service, which was already discussed above.
Are you getting quick bang for your buck in this area?
Practice isn't just about doing things over and over. You can play badly on the violin for years and never even come close to playing Beethoven well. You also need positive feedback to achieve positive impact from practice.
If you want to train your intuition, “you have to know almost immediately whether you did it right or not,” explains Kahneman.
So the next time your instinct tells you to do or not do a thing, take the time to scientifically understand the situation.
Is this an area where templates really exist? Do you have a lot of experience in this area? Have you previously tested the laws that apply in this area? If you can't answer “Yes” to all three of these questions, take a step back and think about the problem with a cool head.
