What is intuition?

[23x]

Explainer: What is intuition?
May 3rd, 2013 in Psychology & Psychiatry

Enlarge

Whether or not intuition is inherently “good” depends on the
situation. Credit: maclauren70
The word intuition is derived from the Latin intueor – to see;
intuition is thus often invoked to explain how the mind can "see"
answers to problems or decisions in the absence of explicit reasoning
– a "gut reaction".
Several recent popular psychology books – such as Malcolm Gladwell's
Blink, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow and Jonah Lehrer's The
Decisive Moment – have emphasised this "power of intuition" and our
ability to "think without thinking", sometimes suggesting we should
rely more heavily on intuition than deliberative (slow) or "rational"
thought processes.
Such books also argue that most of the time we act intuitively – that
is, without knowing why we do things we do.
But what is the evidence for these claims? And what is intuition
anyway?
Defining intuition
Albert Einstein once noted "intuition is nothing but the outcome of
earlier intellectual experience". In a similar vein, the American
psychologist Herbert A. Simon (a fellow Nobel Laureate) stated that
intuition was "nothing more and nothing less than recognition".
These definitions are very useful because they remind us that
intuition need not refer to some magical process by which answers pop
into our minds from thin air or from deep within the unconscious.
On the contrary: intuitive decisions are often a product of previous
intense and/or extensive explicit thinking.
Such decisions may appear subjectively fast and effortless because
they are made on the basis of recognition.
As a simple example, consider the decision to take an umbrella when
you leave for work in the morning. A quick glance at the sky can
provide a cue (such as portentous clouds); the cue gives us access to
information stored in memory (rain is likely); and this information
provides an answer (take an umbrella).
When such cues are not so readily apparent, or information in memory
is either absent or more difficult to access, our decisions shift to
become more deliberative.
Those two extremes are associated with different experiences.
Deliberative thought yields awareness of intermediate steps in a chain
of thought, and of effortful combination of information.
Intuitive thought lacks awareness of intermediate cognitive steps
(because there aren't any) and does not feel effortful (because the
cues trigger the response). But intuition is characterised by feelings
of familiarity and fluency.
Is intuition any good?
Whether or not intuition is inherently "good" really depends on the
situation.
Herbert A. Simon's view that "intuition is recognition" was based on
work describing the performance of chess experts.
Work by the Dutch psychologist Adriaan De Groot, and later by Simon
and the psychologist William G Chase, demonstrated that a signature of
chess expertise is the ability to identify promising moves very
rapidly.
That ability is achieved via immediate "pattern matching" against
memories of up to 100,000 different game positions to determine the
next best move.
Novices, in contrast, don't have access to these memories and thus
have to work through the possible contingencies of each move.
This line of research led to investigations of experts in other fields
and the development of what has become known as recognition-primed
decision making.

Enlarge
Credit: eaubscene
Work by the research psychologist Gary A Klein and colleagues
concluded that fire-fighters can make rapid "inutitive" decisions
about how a fire might spread through a building because they can
access a repertoire of prior similar experiences and run mental
simulations of potential outcomes.
Thus in these kinds of situations, where we have lots of prior
experience to draw on, rapid, intuitive decisions can be very good.
But intuition can also be misleading.
In a contrasting body of work, decision psychologist Daniel Kahneman
(yet another Nobel Laureate) illustrated the flaws inherent in an over-
reliance on intuition.
To illustrate such an error, he considered this simple problem:
If a bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total and the bat costs $1 more than
the ball, how much does the ball cost?
If you are like many people, your immediate – intuitive (?) – answer
would be "10 cents". The total readily separates into a $1 and 10
cents, and 10 cents seems like a plausible amount.
But a little more thinking reveals that this intuitive answer is
wrong. If the ball cost 10 cents the bat would have to be $1.10 and
the total would be $1.20! So the ball must cost 5 cents.
So why does intuition lead us astray in this example? Because here
intuition is not based on skilled recognition, but rather on simple
associations that come to mind readily (i.e., the association between
the $1 and the 10 cents).
Kahneman and Tversky famously argued these simple associations are
relied upon because we often like to use heuristics, or shortcuts,
that make thinking easier.
In many cases these heuristics will work well but if their use goes
"unchecked" by more deliberative thinking, errors – such as the 10
cents answer – will occur.
Using intuition adaptively
The take-home message from the psychological study of intuition is
that we need to exercise caution and attempt to use intuition
adaptively.
When we are in situations we have experienced lots of times (such as
making judgements about the weather), intuition – or rapid recognition
of relevant "cues" – can be a good guide.
But if we find ourselves in novel territory or in situations in which
valid cues are hard to come by (such as stock market predictions),
relying on our "gut" may not be wise.
Our inherent tendency to get away with the minimum amount of thinking
could lead to slip-ups in our reasoning.

Source: The Conversation
"Explainer: What is intuition?." May 3rd, 2013.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-intuition.html




http://medicalxpress.com/print286788717.html