Humans learn many patterns of regularity found in the environment without effort or awareness of learning anything. This implicit knowledge then influences subsequent thought and behavior without coming to consciousness or appearing in awareness woven into an intuition. It’s fast and implicit.
This was explained clearly in a study conducted by the University of Iowa in 1997. Researchers asked participants to choose from one of four decks of cards for a cash reward. However, the cards were rigged such that two decks had small gains but no risk, and two other decks had high risk but high gain. It took participants only 50 cards to intuitively recognize a pattern, but it took 80 cards to be able to explain it.
Intuition can work well sometimes but it can also backfire brutally in unfavorable scenarios. We want to believe that our intuition is telling us something deep and meaningful, it is the “call of my soul.” Unfortunately, it’s just your brain thinking in shortcuts. And like real-life shortcuts, intuition can be both—rewarding and cruel. For intuition to work in your favor, you have to consider these three factors.
1. Expertise
The most important condition is Expertise. If I am a novice mountain climber then my intuition on whether to take a route or not is not going to be very accurate. But as an expert mountain climber, your brain collects specific patterns in two different data sets—safe and unsafe.
As an expert, you might not even be aware of the elements in those data sets. But they are there. This is why your intuition is more trustworthy.
Intuition works for experienced individuals because learning can also happen subconsciously over time. For example, a safety officer spends every day inspecting the factory environment, ensuring it is safe for the workers. After years of doing the same thing, he is absorbed in the process. He learns to recognize the vital signals and patterns, ignoring irrelevant information.
However, it takes an intense amount of domain expertise to develop accurate intuitive judgments— about 10 years, according to a research conducted by Dr. Connson Locke. But you can speed up the process if you focus more on repetition and feedback to create your own mental models.
2. Time Constraint
When you don’t have the time to be analytical, it’s safe to act on your intuition. As we discussed earlier your intuition is the knowledge that your conscious mind is unaware of, which is why it is unreasonable to ignore it.
When you have limited time to analyze all your options, follow your gut feeling because it is faster than a detailed analysis.
3. Nature of Problem
All decisions you make in life can be classified into two broad categories—structured and unstructured. To favor intuition, the problem of concern should be unstructured.
An unstructured problem is one that doesn’t have a clear set of rules or any objective criteria to get it right. For example, aesthetic judgments regarding whether a new movie or art exhibit will be a success, or political judgments regarding the best way to get a new initiative approved, or human resource judgments regarding the best way to resolve a conflict between employees. In situations like this, it’s reasonable to go with your gut.
The types of problems that don’t benefit from intuition are the ones that have clear decision rules, objective criteria, and abundant data to perform an analysis. In making a medical diagnosis, for example, computer algorithms tend to be more accurate than an experienced medical doctor’s judgment.
Intuition in Business Strategies
Perhaps surprisingly, many of the world’s most influential businessmen admit to making decisions based on intuition rather than logical, deliberate thinking.
Out of a sample of 36 CEOs, 85% confirmed that intuition – in the form of rules of thumb (ROTs) – was central to their decision-making process (Maidique, 2011).
The following list of ROTs comes from the former president of Lenovo, Bill Amelio:
Strategic
Focus on a few crucial decisions.
A decision is better than no decision, but don’t let it run too far if it’s not working.
Trust your intuition.
People
Communicate big decisions regularly and frequently.
Don’t tolerate jerks.
Build a team you can trust.
Trust your intuition.
Self
Get feedback early and regularly, and act on it.
Earn others’ trust and confidence.
Gain credibility by showing your vulnerabilities.
You have strengths; use them.
Trust your intuition.
From stockbrokers to dentists1, people from all professions favor intuition in some way or the other. It even helped some artists to identify a $10M scam2 in 1983.
However, intuition is essentially a feeling, and there is no singular source of that feeling. It is not always an outcome of expertise. Intuition can act as a source of cognitive biases as well. Our aversion to a particular option may reflect a hidden nervousness, insecurity, or fear of the unknown. If so, then our intuition will lead us to reject a perfectly good option.
Ultimately, you should use both, intuition and analysis. There may be many times when intuition will help you narrow down the options, which can then be analyzed objectively and logically. But always remember, before you decide to trust your gut, ask yourself— Am I an expert? Is this an unstructured problem? And how much time do I have to choose?
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Clinical decision making – choosing between intuition, experience, and scientific evidence (2016, British Dental Journal).
In 1983, Gianfranco Becchina had a rare sixth-century sculpture for sale with a staggering $10 million price tag. The Getty Museum, having reviewed X-rays, expert testimony, and historical documentation, agreed to its purchase.
However, when Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, arrived to admire the statue, he knew, intuitively, something was wrong.
According to Hoving, it seemed “fresh,” which was unexpected as the 2,000-year-old statue had been taken out of the ground.
He was right. While the sculpture was from a workshop in Rome, it originated from a forger in 1980, rather than a master sculptor from antiquity.