What’s the deal with your intuition?

Recently, I noticed I got a bad feeling about someone. They had not done me any harm, but something about them did not feel right. It made me wonder if intuition was something that could be trusted. I had a few questions about intuition, like does it know what is best for us?

According to an article I found on psychology today, it very well might. I found this article called “The Science of Intuition”, written by Dr. Kelly Turner. In her article, she describes two separate studies involving intuition.

  Physiologically the way researchers measured “intuition” was through the sweat glands in the subjects palms. The study involved two decks of cards. One was set up to make large winnings followed by enormous losses, but the other was set up for small winnings and nearly no losses. The measurements discovered that the sweat glands in the palms of those participating in the study opened up whenever they reached for a card in the “dangerous” deck after they pulled about ten cards. A similar study was mentioned in which people had to choose which curtain had something behind it. Again, the sweat glands opened up at the time when they knew which it was going to be behind (Turner, 2014).

I thought this was very interesting because I’ve always been pretty logical in my ways of thinking, but more often than not it seems that following your intuition is of a great importance. There is a wealth of research on trusting intuition and why it works. Did you know that apparently people who make more rash immediate decisions when buying a car or a house end up being happier with their decision in the long run (Dijksterhuis et Al.,2006)? This was very interesting to me because in the past I have taken a job simply because it was offered to me, it didn’t feel like it would further my career, or give me a one up on anything, but I absolutely LOVED it. I worked at a museum for a summer and dealt with tourist in my hometown. I ended up learning a lot where I worked about not only the types of jobs I am interested in, but about myself. It appears that our intuition does know what’s best for us, and we should try to trust it as much as we can.

What was a time where you trusted your intuition and it was right?

Sources: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/radical-remission/201405/the-science-behind-intuition http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16484496

Other reads: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-one-lifespan/201209/understanding-intuition-and-how-the-mind-works

Edited by MusingU