Here, I present psychology's assessment of intuition's powers and perils. Consider the importance of intuition to a judge or juror determining the fates of individuals, an investor affecting fortunes or a clinician determining a client's suicidality. Intuitions shape our anxieties, impressions and relationships. They influence the president's judgments, a gambler's bets and a personnel director's hiring decisions. Our gut level intuitions have helped us all avert—and sometimes enabled—misfortunes. "Nobody can dictate my behavior," said Diana, Princess of Wales, in her last interview before her fatal accident. "I work through instinct, and instinct is my best counselor."
The Powers
Prince Charles once said, "Buried deep within each and every one of us, there is an instinctive, heartfelt awareness that provides—if we allow it to—the most reliable guide as to whether or not our actions are really in the long-term interests of our planet and all the life it supports." We need, he continued, to listen "more to the common sense emanating from our hearts." In this postmodernist New Age, Prince Charles has plenty of company. Writers, counselors and speakers galore offer to develop our sixth sense, harness our inner wisdom and unlock our subconsciousmind. Books guide us toward intuitive healing, learning, spirituality, investing and managing.
Deciding what to make of this new cottage industry is tricky. "Intuitives"—intuition authors and trainers—seem largely oblivious to new scientific explorations of how the human mind processes information. Are their intuitions about intuition valid? Consciousness is sometimes invaded by uninvited truth, there to behold if we desist from rational thinking and instead listen to the small voices within. Or are intuitives' writings tocognitive science what professional wrestling is to athletics?
Today, cognitive science is revealing a fascinating unconscious mind thatFreud never told us about: Thinking occurs not onstage but offstage, out of sight. Studies of automatic processing, subliminal priming, implicitmemory, heuristics, right-brain processing, instant emotions, nonverbal communication and creativity unveil our intuitive capacities. Thinking, memory and attitude operate on two levels: the conscious/deliberate and the unconscious/automatic. "Dual processing," researchers call it. We know more than we know we know.
This idea—that much of our everyday thinking, feeling and acting operates outside conscious awareness—is a difficult one to accept, report psychologists John Bargh, Ph.D., of New York University (NYU), and Tanya Chartrand, Ph.D., of Ohio State University. Our consciousness isbiased to think that its own intentions and deliberate choices rule our lives. But consciousness overrates its own control.
Take something as simple as speaking. Strings of words effortlessly spill out of your mouth with near-perfect syntax. It's as if there were servants upstairs, busily hammering together sentences that get piped down and fluidly shoved out of your mouth.
Even as I type this paragraph, my fingers gallop across the keyboard under instructions from…somewhere. And if a person enters my office while I'm typing, the cognitive servants running my fingers will finish the sentence while I start up a conversation. We have, it seems, two minds: one for momentary awareness, the other for everything else.
Reading "Thin Slices"
Do you ever find yourself sizing someone up in an instant, noting their animation, gestures and manners of speaking? These "thin slices" of someone's behavior can reveal much and form lasting impressions. Harvard psychology professors Nalini Ambady, Ph.D., and Robert Rosenthal, Ph.D., discovered as much after videotaping fellow instructors. Observers viewed three thin slices of each professor's behavior—10-second clips from the beginning, middle and end of a class—and then rated the professors' confidence, energy and warmth. They found that these ratings predicted with amazing accuracy the average student rating taken at semester's end. Thinner slices—three two-second clips—also yielded ratings similarly congruent with student evaluations.
Even microthin slices tell us something. When Bargh flashes an image for just two-tenths of a second, his NYU students respond to it instantly. "We're finding that everything is evaluated as good or bad within a quarter of a second," he says. So before engaging in rational thought, we may find ourselves either loathing or loving a piece of art or our new neighbor.
There is ancient biological wisdom to this express link between perception and response. When meeting a stranger in the forest, one had to instantly decide: friend or foe? Those who could read a person quickly and accurately were more likely to survive and leave descendants, which helps explain why humans today can distinguish at a glance between facial expressions of anger, sadness, fear or pleasure.
Indeed, thanks to emotional pathways that run from the eye to the brain's emotional control centers—bypassing the cortex—we often react emotionally before we've even had time to interpret consciously. Below the radar of awareness we can process threatening information in milliseconds. Then, after the cortex has had time to interpret the threat, the thinking brain asserts itself. In the forest, we physically jump at the sound of rustling leaves, leaving the cortex to decide later whether the sound came from a predator or the wind.
Clearly, human intelligence is more than logic, and comprehension is more than consciousness. Psychologist George Miller illustrated this truth using a conversation between two ship passengers: "'There sure is a lot of water in the ocean,' said one. 'Yes,' answered his friend, 'and we've only seen the top of it.'"
Women's and Men's Intuitions
When Jackie Larsen left her Grand Marais, Minnesota, church group one morning in April, 2001, she encountered Christopher Bono, a clean-cut, well-mannered youth whose car had broken down. Larsen suggested he use the telephone at her shop to call for assistance, but when Bono later appeared, she felt a pain in her stomach. Sensing that something was wrong, she insisted they talk outside. "I can tell by your manners that you have a nice mother," Larsen said. Bono's eyes fixed on her. "I don't know where my mother is," he replied.
Larsen casually ended the conversation, directed Bono back to the church, then called the police and suggested they trace his license plate. Bono's car was registered to Lucia Bono, his mother, in Illinois. When police discovered Lucia dead in her bathtub, Christopher Bono, 16, was charged with first-degree murder.
Was it a coincidence that Jackie Larsen doubted Bono's calm exterior, or was it women's intuition, which so many believe is superior to men's? When surveyed, women are far more likely to describe themselves as empathic than are men. The gender gap in empathy also extends to behavior, though to a lesser degree. For instance, women are more likely to cry at another's distress. And the gap helps explain why both genders report that their friendships with women are more intimate, enjoyable and nurturing than are their friendships with men. When seeking understanding, both men and women usually turn to women.
One explanation for this is women's seemingly superior skill at reading others' emotions. In an analysis of 125 studies on sensitivity, Judith Hall, Ph.D., a Northeastern University psychology professor, discerned that women generally surpass men at decoding emotional messages. When shown a silent, two-second film clip of a woman who seems upset, women guessed more accurately that she was discussing her divorce rather than criticizing someone. Women's nonverbal sensitivity also gives them the edge in spotting lies. Research suggests they surpass men in discerning whether a male-female couple is genuinely romantic or a posed, phony couple.
This gender gap can be easily overstated—some men are more empathic and sensitive than the average woman—but it generally appears real and is celebrated by some feminists as one of "women's ways of knowing." Women more often base knowledge on intuitive and personal grounds. More than half of today's intuition books are authored by females. By comparison, in the "science and the paranormal" section of a 2001 Prometheus Books catalog, only four of 110 authors were female.
Psychologists debate whether the intuition gap is truly intrinsic to gender. Whatever the reason, Western tradition has historically viewed rational thinking as masculine and intuition as feminine, notes feminist historian Evelyn Fox Keller. Women's ways of knowing, argues feminist writer Mary Field Belinky, give greater latitude to subjective knowledge. She contends that women winnow competing ideas less through hostile scrutiny than by getting inside another's mind, and often by way of friendly conversation. Some personality tests show that nearly six in ten men score as "thinkers" (claiming to make decisions objectively, using logic), while three in four women score as "feelers" (claiming to make decisions subjectively, based on what they feel is right).
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