{"id":63350,"date":"2022-03-29T06:44:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-29T10:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=63350"},"modified":"2022-04-06T12:44:26","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T16:44:26","slug":"how-does-intuition-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-does-intuition-work\/","title":{"rendered":"How Does Intuition Work?\u2014Understanding the 6th Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Have you ever been in a situation where you knew the right thing to do but couldn&#8217;t explain why or how you arrived at that knowledge? How does intuition work? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Intuition is a concept that seems obscure and mysterious because we don&#8217;t understand the mechanics behind it. But just because we can&#8217;t pinpoint the exact chain of reasoning behind an intuitive judgment or decision does not mean intuition is a fluke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep reading to learn how intuition works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-understanding-intuition\">Understanding Intuition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>How does intuition work? When we think unconsciously or intuitively, we make decisions without understanding why, or sometimes even without realizing we\u2019ve made them. However, that does not mean that intuitive knowledge is some higher power guiding us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we know &#8220;in our bones&#8221; that something is true, despite having very little information about the situation at hand, we actually draw from a vast database of information stored in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-unconscious-mind\/\">unconscious mind<\/a>. <strong>The unconscious mind takes a &#8220;thin slice&#8221; of experience and quickly recognizes patterns in it.<\/strong> <strong>It then makes an inference about a current situation based on the patterns of similar experiences in the past.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-intuitive-decision-making-is-domain-specific\">Intuitive Decision-Making Is Domain-Specific<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>If your unconscious mind has had enough experience in a particular area to build up an accurate, well-organized database, your intuitive decisions will draw on this database and are likely to be sound. But if you\u2019re a novice in a particular area, your database will probably be small and not very accurate: a recipe for bad decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Psychologist Gary Klein came to a similar conclusion in his work on the role of experience in rapid <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/methods-of-decision-making-crucial-conversations\/\">decision-making<\/a>. Klein was interested in experienced firefighters, who have to make fast, potentially life-or-death decisions under pressure. <a href=\"https:\/\/citeseerx.ist.psu.edu\/viewdoc\/download?doi=10.1.1.909.7602&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf\">He found that over time, these firefighters had built up an unconscious \u201cprototype\u201d of a typical building fire.<\/a> When the prototype and the situation matched, their decisions were so rehearsed that they didn\u2019t feel like decisions at all. But when the situation didn\u2019t match the prototype, they got a \u201cfeeling\u201d that something was wrong, which led to a different decision.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, one lead firefighter took his team into a burning house, and they started hosing down the place they thought the fire was coming from. But the water didn\u2019t work. He also noticed that the house was unusually hot and that he couldn\u2019t hear the usual roar of flames. Not knowing what was going on, he decided to evacuate his team from the house. Less than a minute later, the floor they had been standing on collapsed. This fire chief said he\u2019d had a \u201csixth sense\u201d about the need to evacuate\u2014but Klein says that he made the call because his unconscious mind had noticed a mismatch with the prototype.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This work suggests that the quality of our snap decision-making is domain-specific. We wouldn\u2019t, for example, expect a firefighter who makes exceptional <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/snap-decisions\/\">snap decisions<\/a> about burning buildings to be particularly good at analyzing marriages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever been in a situation where you knew the right thing to do but couldn&#8217;t explain why or how you arrived at that knowledge? How does intuition work? Intuition is a concept that seems obscure and mysterious because we don&#8217;t understand the mechanics behind it. But just because we can&#8217;t pinpoint the exact chain of reasoning behind an intuitive judgment or decision does not mean intuition is a fluke. Keep reading to learn how intuition works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":34827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-63350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","tag-blink","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How Does Intuition Work?\u2014Understanding the 6th Sense - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Just because you can&#039;t explain how you arrived at a judgment or a decision doesn&#039;t mean intuition is a fluke. 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