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.
