Intuition - When Does It Work?

Tuesday 5 July 2022, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Any replies to the organizer - thormay@yahoo.com

Venue: ZOOM online

Focus Questions

1. Do you consider yourself to be intuitive and/or analytical? Justify.

2. When might intuition be reliable, and when might it be unreliable?

3. What personality types are most easily persuaded by their own intuition?

4. Who are some public figures who see themselves as intuitive ('gut instinct' types)? Is their confidence justified?

5. True love matches are famously supposed to be based on intuition ('... the glance across a crowded room'). Is this a myth? Who does it work for? How durable is this kind of intuitive attraction? Have you been gifted in this way?

6. Love aside, do personalities seem to be repelled or attracted because the other party is intuitive and/or analytical? What are some consequences of this?

7. When you seem to be influenced by intuition (if you are) is it more likely to be of a negative or a positive kind? Why?

8. Is there a difference in who might be intuitive about events compared to who might be intuitive about personalities? If so, why? Examples of how this difference might play out in real life?

9. Is it possible to teach analytical thinking to individuals with a strong intuitive bias, or intuitive responses to excessively analytical types? How would you go about that?

10. The stereotype of some cultures is that logic and reason dominate while other cultures are more given to intuitive responses. e.g. Think northern and southern Europe. Do such stereotypes have any foundation in fact? What is the evidence?

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Extra Reading

Emma Beddington (16 June 2022) "‘If you work hard and succeed, you’re a loser’: can you really wing it to the top?" The Guardian @ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/16/wing-it-to-the-top-leaders-boris-johnson-elon-musk

Jeremy Sutton (27 Aug 2020) "What Is Intuition and Why Is It Important? 5 Examples". Positive Psychology @ https://positivepsychology.com/intuition/ [Quote: "Herbert Simon’s research in the 1950s into the concept of bounded rationality guides much of the work on intuition. Simon suggested that people often make decisions – and reduce their cognitive load – based on what is good enough. Rather than arriving at complete and entirely correct answers, when faced with specific tasks, we often resort to heuristics – or rules of thumb – that help form intuitive judgments (Simon, 1955)".]

Karen Young (2015) "9 Ways to Tap Into Your Intuition (And Why You’ll Want To)". Hey Sigund blog @ https://www.heysigmund.com/9-ways-to-tap-into-your-intuition-and-why-youll-want-to/ [Quote: "The human brain has two ‘operating systems’. The first is quick, instinctual and effortless. This is where our intuition lies. Intuition works by drawing on patterns collected by our experience and when we have to make a quick decision about whether something is real, fake, feels good, feels bad, right or wrong, we draw on these patterns. It all happens ‘offline’, outside our conscious awareness. The second operating system is slower to respond. It’s more analytical and deliberate and it’s conscious."]

Cari Nierenberg published (May 21, 2016) "The Science of Intuition: How to Measure 'Hunches' and 'Gut Feelings'". Live Science website @ https://www.livescience.com/54825-scientists-measure-intuition.html [Quote: "Previous studies didn't actually measure intuition because researchers didn't really know how to quantify it, Pearson said. Instead, these studies relied on information from questionnaires that asked people how they were feeling while they made decisions, which is more of a reflection of people's opinion of their intuition than an actual measurement of it, Pearson said.
In the new research, however, Pearson and his colleagues came up with a series of experiments to determine whether people were using their intuition to help guide their decision making or judgment. The researchers defined intuition as the influence of "nonconscious emotional information" from the body or the brain, such as an instinctual feeling or sensation". ]

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