INTUITIVE THINKING

INTUITIVE THINKING
"Intuition tells us that we pay attention to more than we do,
that our memories are more detailed and robust then they
are, that confident people are competent people, that we know
more than we really do, that coincidences and correlations
demonstrate causation, and that our brains have vast reserves
of power that are easy to unlock.  But in all these cases,
our intuition are wrong, and they can cost us our fortunes,
our health, and even our lives if we follow them blindly."  Christopher
Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla, (NY: Broadway Books, 2011) 231.

"Intuitions shape our fears (do we fear the right things?), impressions (are our
stereotypes accurate?), and relationships (does she like me?)." David G. Myers, Intuition:  Its Powers
and Perils, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002) 10.


INTUITION is the ability to make insightful decisions quickly based on gut reactions.  Unfortunately (as demonstrated above), intuitive thinking is often misleading or even wrong.  Yet,
many MissLed women have a nearly childlike faith in the reliability of intuitive thinking.
While intuition can provide  useful insights, it can also dangerously mislead.
The ways it can lead MissLed women astray included illusory correlations, self-fulfilling prophecies, dramatic anomalies and other misleading heuristics. 
Intuitive thinking is often reflected when MissLed women claim  that their inner "knowing" is "right." In truth, of course, they
may feel certain that their intuitive thinking is trustworthy, but they are quite often wrong.
MissLed women who choose to emphasize intuitive thinking often rely on hunches, without factoring in personal backgrounds, scientific fact, and unperceived influences, such as random streaks of occurrence. However,  in order to be effective, Intuitive thinking must withstand the test of logic. In addition, there are dangers in following intuitive thoughts based on the idea that they simply “feel right” – especially if MissLed women follow intuitions in the absence of understanding how the human mind operates.

"Follow" or "trust" your intuitive thoughts or feelings is
very common contemporary advice. It flatters, even intoxicates MissLed women, as it
feeds their Egocentric belief that women have special ways of knowing.  Such supposed women-only
ability serves to boost their belief that women are "special" and therefore deserving
of commensurate respect and to be listened to.

Such ability, of course, exists largely in MissLed women's imaginations.  And there's significant costs to such misplaced belief.  In fact, common thinking errors resulting from intuitive thinking include over-optimism, untested attitudes, superficial biases, and wishful thinking. 

Specifically, intuitive thinking ineffectiveness is shown by:

1) hindsight bias ('I knew it all along'),
2) self-serving bias (accepting more responsibility for successes than for failures),
3) overconfidence bias (tendency to intuitively assume that the way they perceive the world,
so it actually is).
4) confirmation bias (remembering the times intuition "hits" while forgetting the many more time
that intuitive thinking "misses." They rarely understand the role of chance and coincidence, preferring to give credit to metaphysical causes). Indeed, intuitive thinking - like any other type of thinking - often loses objectivity when it comes to evaluating its own level of success:


"In fact, we remember much more easily those flashes of intuitive brilliance, causing
us to overvalue our intuition because we over-remember its successes." J. Edward Russo, Paul J.H. Schoemaker, Winning Decisions: Getting It Right the First Time, (NY:  Doubleday, 2002) 136.

"Intuition also is prone to err when we evaluate our own knowledge
and abilities. This is most strikingly evident in three robust phenomena:
hindsight bias, self-serving bias, and overconfidence bias." David G. Myers, Intuition:  Its Powers
and Perils, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002) 88.


With their growing propensity for fearfulness and emotional reasoning, MissLed women have an
unfortunate tendency to think or feel intuitively afraid of spectacular or uncommon risks, yet their minds downplay the common risks: .

"It is no coincidence that fear is flourishing in the age of emotion and
intuition." Michael R. LeGault, Th!nk: Why Crucial Decisions Can't be made in the Blink of an Eye, (NY: Threshold Editions, 2006) 248.

MissLed women's overconfidence in the concept of "women's intuition" can result in their intuitive thinking  running amok. This occurs when they fail to balance intuition with logical reasoning.
In addition, MissLed women's emotionalism clouds their ability to think intuitively:

"Our passions infiltrate our intuitions. When in a bad mood, we read someone's neutral
look as a glare; in a good mood, we intuit the same look as interest." David G. Myers, Intuition:  Its Powers and Perils, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002) 73.

"The cultural stereotype of "women's intuition" - the notion that women are more accurate in their interpersonal perceptions than men - has been widely accepted but rarely examined in reviews of the relevant research." William John Ickes, Empathic Accuracy, (NY:  Guilford Press, 1997) 8.

"Although the stereotype of "women's intuition" may contain the proverbial kernel of truth, gender differences in empathic skills and disposition appear to be small rather than large, and specific rather than general in their scope.  On average, women are indeed more accurate decoders than men of other people's nonverbal behaviors, but this relatively modest advantage applies primarily to the decoding of facial expressions that convey intended, rather than untended (i.e. leaky) emotions."William John Ickes, Empathic Accuracy, (NY:  Guilford Press, 1997) 139-140.

"Although men may not differ reliably from women in their ability to make accurate inferences about the specific content of other people's thoughts and feelings, their own gender-role socialization may provide them with less motivation to do so." William John Ickes, Empathic Accuracy, (NY:  Guilford Press, 1997) 140.

 

WHY DOES WOMEN BEING MISLEAD ABOUT THEIR INTUITIVE THINKING MATTER?
Intuition is a normal and important component of thought.  However, MissLed women who rely heavily on intuitive thinking are playing with fire.  Why, then, do too many choose to think intuitively?  Simply put - is popular, encouraged (especially among women) and easier.  Too often, MissLed women are seduced by the simplicity and speed of intuitive thinking.
As a result, instead of getting hard won but favorable outcomes from critical thinking and its main elements, observation, logical reasoning, and skepticism, instead, they'll get unfavorable (albeit "easy" and quick) results.

MissLed women must move beyond their overconfidence in the power of intuition, along with their  emotional attachments to its reliability. In fact, intuition is most trustworthy only after a person does the hard work of gaining knowledge and wisdom.  Only then - and only when combined with reason and filtered through experience - can it be a path to effective decision-making and self-affirming behavior:

"Social psychologists have...accumulated a list of classic demonstrations
of our intuition failing to recognize things that matter." David G. Myers, Intuition:  Its Powers and Perils, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002) 76.
 
"So, despite our impressive capacity for thinking without awareness, for social intuitions,
and for intuitive expertise and creativity, our intuitions sometimes mislead us as to what we
have experienced, how we have changed, what has influenced us, and what we will feel and do."  David G. Myers, Intuition:  Its Powers and Perils, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002) 86.


Lastly, intuitive thinking must be utilized with extreme care when making important decisions:
“The key to successful decision making is knowing when to trust your intuition and when to be wary of it and do the
hard work of thinking things through.” Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla, (NY: Broadway Books, 2011) 235.

"To those who study decision-making, the most striking feature of intuitive
judgment is not its occasional brilliance but its rampant mediocrity." J. Edward Russo, Paul J.H. Schoemaker, Winning Decisions: Getting It Right the First Time, (NY:  Doubleday, 2002) 135-136.
================================================================================

Raymond S. Nickerson, Aspects of Rationality: Reflections on What It Means to be Rational and Whether We Are, (NY: Psychology Press, 2008)

 

"The  intuition that is assumed to yield rationality is intuition upon reflection or intuition upon critical

analysis." 39.

 

"People get a notion in their heads, cast about for a few pieces of evidence that support it, and then settle comfortably into their position. We promote intuitions and half-truths based on partial evidence to the status of truths without bothering to consider the full body of evidence that bears on the issue."

141.

================================================================

Jonathon Baron, Judgment Misguided:  Intuition and Error in Public Decision Making,(Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1998)

 

 "Consider... the intuitive bias against causing harm through action, as opposed to omission...The intuition that distinguishes acts and omissions is a principle that people apply to their decisions.  It has, through its effect on many people, brought outcomes that nobody wanted, in particular, epidemics and deaths from preventable diseases." 2.

 

"People follow intuitive principles of decision making that are not designed to produce the best consequences in all cases.  Predictably, these principles sometimes lead to unhappy results that could have been avoided if people had focused more on how to produce the best results.  So our intuitive principles have a cost." 2.

 

"In sum, Intuitions may have only small effects on big outcomes, but they may also be more controllable than some of the other forces, especially because they have not been seen before as  a source of trouble." 6.

 

 "Some intuitive beliefs are held blindly.  People do not know what gives them their authority, and often nothing does.  This ignorance does nothing to weaken people's commitment." 5.

"People often make decisions about public issues on the basis of their intuitions rather than on the basis of expected future effects, and they are often overconfident in the correction of these intuitions." 179.

 

 

===,====================================================================
The Feeling of Risk: New Perspectives on Risk Perception
 By Paul Slovic (NY: Earthscan, 2010)

"Risk as feelings refers to our fast, instinctive and intuitive reactions to danger." 21.

"Sometimes we are given the advice to trust our guts when we make
important decisions.  Unfortunately, our guts are full of questionable advice." 4.
"Intuition has understandable appeal.  It's quick, easy, and requires no tedious
analysis. And it can sometimes be brilliant...Unfortunately, as a decision-making tool, intuition also has
significant drawbacks.  It's hard to dispute choices based on intuition because the
decision-makers can't articulate their own underlying reasoning.  People 'just know' they're
right, or they have 'a strong sense of it,' or they're relying on
'gut feel." You can't tell if the PROCESS is good or bad, because there's no
process to examine.  It's so quick, so automatic, there is no way to evaluate
its quality.  So how are you to know whether a decision based only on
intuition is one worthy of your trust or a capricious mistake that will be
wildly off the mark?


-----------------------------------------------------
Professor David G. Myers, Intuition: Its Powers and Perils,
"It's true, intuition is not only hot, it is also a big part of human decision making.  But the complementary truth is that intuition often errs." 5.
Intuitive thinking is MissLed women's inner "knowing" that they are "right." In truth, of course, they
may feel certain that their intuitive thinking is trustworthy, but they are quite often wrong.

"Awareness that our intuition could benefit from some correction, in
realms from sports to business to spirituality, makes clear the need for
disciplined training of the mind.  Intuition works well in some realms, but
it needs restraints and checks in others." 247.

The trouble with much-hyped women's intuition is that it’s often wrong.  MissLed women
are intuitively overconfident of their own abilities in all kinds of areas.
They intuitively find patterns when it fact what they are looking at is random. 
"Illusory intuitions typically are results of our mind's efficient short-cuts.  They parallel  our perceptual intuitions, which generally work but sometimes run amok."  68.



"...our lives are guided by subterranean intuitive thinking and that our intuitions, though
speedily efficient, often err in ways we need to understand.  Ergo, intuition - our capacity -
our capacity for direct, immediate knowledge prior to rational analysis - has both surprising
potency and surprising perils." 128-129.

"By checking our intuitions - our hunches, our gut feelings, our voices within -
against available evidence we can think smarter." 129.


=============================================================================
"Sometimes, we are given the advice to trust our guts when we make important decisions.  Unfortunately, our guts are full of questionable advice." Chip Heath, Dan Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, (NY:  Crown Business, 2013) 4.


"Somewhat depressingly, the sta...where we should trust our intuitions don't characterize many of the most important decisions we make in life - which college to go to, whom to marry, which products to launch, which employee to promote." Chip Heath, Dan Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work,  (NY:  Crown Business, 2013) 278.

MissLed women often struggle with intuitive thinking because they seek to use it without putting in the essential work needed to ensure it is accurate and reliable:

"Much has been written in recent years about intuitive decisions, which can be made quickly and accurately.  But - this is critical - but intuition is only accurate in domains where it has been properly trained.  To train intuition requires a predictable environment where you get lost of repetition and quick feedback on your choices." Chip Heath, Dan Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work,  (NY:  Crown Business, 2013) 25.
================================================================================
."The principle weakness of intuition and feeling sources of knowledge is that the insights they produce are as likely to be wrong as right.  If left to intuitions, most algebra problems would remain unsolved.  Intuitive fact-claims must be double-checked before credentials are issued."
James L. Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering,  (Boston, Wadsworth Cenage, 2006) 11.

=================================================================
"Psychologists studied the intuitive powers of more than 15,000 men and women in distinguishing a real smile from a false one...Before studying the faces, the participants were asked to rate their Intuitive abilities. 77% of the Women said they were highly intuitive, compared to only 58% of the men. Yet, women's Intuitive judgments WERE NOT better than men's; they identified the real smile correctly in 71% of cases, whereas men did so in 72%..."Interestingly, men could better judge women's genuine smiles than those of other men, whereas women were less adept at judging the sincerity of the opposite sex."
Gerd Gigerenzer, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, (NY:  Penguin Group, 2007) 71.

"On the one hand, Sigmund Freud warned that it is "an illusion to expect anything from intuition," and many contemporary psychologists attack intuition as being systematically flawed because it ignores information, violates the laws of logic, and is the source of many human disasters...On the other hand, ordinary people are inclined to trust their intuitions, and popular books eulogize the marvels of rapid cognition." Gerd Gigerenzer, Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious,(NY:  Penguin Group, 2007) 17.

"The cultural stereotype of "women's intuition" - the notion that women are more accurate in their interpersonal perceptions than men - has been widely accepted but rarely examined in reviews of the relevant research." William John Ickes, Empathic Accuracy, (NY:  Guilford Press, 1997) 8.

"Although the stereotype of "women's intuition" may contain the proverbial kernel of truth, gender differences in empathic skills and disposition appear to be small rather than large, and specific rather than general in their scope.  On average, women are indeed more accurate decoders than men of other people's nonverbal behaviors, but this relatively modest advantage applies primarily to the decoding of facial expressions that convey intended, rather than untended (i.e. leaky) emotions."William John Ickes, Empathic Accuracy, (NY:  Guilford Press, 1997) 139-140.

"Although men may not differ reliably from women in their ability to make accurate inferences about the specific content of other people's thoughts and feelings, their own gender-role socialization may provide them with less motivation to do so." William John Ickes, Empathic Accuracy, (NY:  Guilford Press, 1997) 140.