A hunch. A nagging feeling. A suspicion. A sixth sense. An inner voice. All of these are ways of describing intuition, that most nebulous and new-agey ability that supposedly lies inside all of us. Many women claim to rely heavily on their intuition, while many men say that it doesn’t factor into their lives much at all. But whether we grasp it or not, our powers of intuition affect our lives and our decision making more than we ever realize.
A Sensory Shortcut
Intuition gets lumped in with crystals, chakras, and tarot cards as the kind of thinking that humans respect least. We value logic, which requires reason and evidence, and intuition is its polar opposite— unconscious knowing without any logical rationale. Intuition leads to strong assessments that we can’t explain readily. If you’ve ever had a powerful feeling that you know something without knowing how you know it, you’ve experienced your intuition at work.
Our minds absorb and process incredible amounts of information every moment, and when we use our intuition, we fall back on those sometimes tiny and inconsequential observations to make decisions. Even if we don’t remember them, we squirrel them away in the recesses of our memory, where they wait to be called into use. For example, when walking down a familiar street at night, a woman might feel apprehensive without understanding why. She may not remember the shifty characters she saw loitering there a few days ago, or the newscaster who reported an increase in assaults in the area. She may not consciously hear the footsteps behind her that are a little too close. But her brain keeps these cues on file, and it sends her a warning to protect her. Intuition allows us to arrive at an answer without showing us the problem first; some studies have even shown it to be faster and more accurate than deliberate thought.
“A Woman Knows” … or Does She?
One cultural stereotype says that women have better intuition than men do, but many studies reveal that’s not the case. In his book Everyday Mind Reading, Dr. William Ickes writes that only in studies in which women are aware of the stereotype do they perform better than men on tests of intuitive ability. He hypothesized that there is no real innate difference in the sexes; it’s just that when there’s an expectation that women will do better, they try harder to excel at the task. Men, already assumed to have inferior intuitive powers, have no such motivation, but researchers have found that when study participants were paid for correct answers, the gender disparity went away. Once the men had a motivation to do well, they were able to answer the questions just as accurately, even though they were more likely to credit their manly “gut feelings,” rather than their “feminine” intuition.
Women are accustomed to relying on their intuition and are more comfortable using it in daily life. They’re not afraid to follow hunches, whether they turn out to be right or wrong. Men, on the other hand, often feel uncomfortable straying from rational thought, and never get used to trusting their inner voice.
Go with Your Gut or Rely on Reason?
Using intuitive thought to make decisions can be tricky. The problem is that if we don’t listen to our intuition right away, rational thinking takes over and often talks us out of what we know in our hearts to be true. Also, certain decisions are better to make intuitively than others.
According to Psychology Today, the best times to use intuition are when making large consumer purchases or in interpersonal relationships. With these decisions, people’s experiences can better inform the choices they make. A complicated decision such as buying a home or car, choosing a wedding gown, or discerning if someone is lying can’t be quantified with cold, hard data and rational thought, because they are tied up too closely with memory and emotion. Studies show that people who make these decisions based on their intuition are happier than people who decide based on rationality. If you walk into a house that’s the right price, in the right neighborhood, but something seems “off,” it’s better to listen to your gut. It’s also very common for people in successful relationships to claim that when they met each other, they “just knew.” Our hearts and minds are reacting in ways we might not understand, but it’s wise to follow these intuitive signals.
When a decision is about money, however, it’s best to ignore gut feelings and intuition, since these are precisely the times when cold, hard data and logic are necessary. Personal feelings about a stock pick, knowledge that its value has been rising, or impressions of the company’s ad campaign are not valid investment strategies. Likewise, making small, relatively insignificant purchases is best done by weighing the item’s value against the price and not allowing the smell of the product or the attractiveness of the packaging to cloud your judgment (even though marketers try to trip us up and persuade us to make emotional decisions based on these irrelevant criteria every day.)
Even the most rational and logical people must admit to using their intuition in many of their most important decisions. Knowing how it works is the first step to building more informed and effective intuition, but knowing when to follow it and when to ignore it is the key to making better decisions.