TRUSTING YOUR GUT TO MAKE DECISIONS

Is it rational to trust your gut feelings? Does it matter if you face a decision that is personal versus a decision you have at work? Does the amount and reliability of information prompt you to make a decision solely on logic and rationality, or does gut feeling still play a part? Are gut feelings defined as an emotion or something else? These are questions that have prompted a great deal of research and discussion for hundreds of years.

A Definition of Gut Feelings

Gut feelings can be defined as an instinct or intuition; an immediate or basic feeling or reaction without a logical rationale, an instinctive feeling, as opposed to an opinion based on facts. If you have a gut feeling about something, you are sure even though you cannot give reasons.

Gut feelings are also known as intuition.

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired. Different writers give the word “intuition” a great variety of different meanings, ranging from direct access to unconscious knowledge, unconscious cognition, inner sensing, inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition, and the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. Some philosophers contend that the word “intuition” is often misunderstood or misused to mean instinct, truth, belief, and meaning, whereas others contend that faculties such as instinct, belief, and intuition are factually related. The word intuition comes from the Latin verb intueri translated as “consider” or from the late middle English word intuit, “to contemplate.”

Both Eastern and Western philosophers have studied the concept in great detail.

In the East, intuition is mostly intertwined with religion and spirituality, and various meanings exist from different religious texts. In the West, intuition does not appear as a separate field of study, and early mention and definition can be traced back to Plato. In his book Republic he tries to define intuition as a fundamental capacity of human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality.

In his book, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes refers to an intuition as a pre-exiting knowledge gained through rational reasoning or discovering truth through contemplation. This definition is commonly referred to as rational intuition. Later, philosophers such as Hume, have more ambiguous interpretations of intuition.

Immanuel Kant found intuition is thought of as basic sensory information provided by the cognitive faculty of sensibility (equivalent to what might loosely be called perception). Kant held that our mind casts all of our external intuitions in the form of space, and all of our internal intuitions (memory, thought) in the form of time.

According to Sigmund Freud, knowledge could only be attained through the intellectual manipulation of carefully made observations and rejected any other means of acquiring knowledge such as intuition, and his findings could have been an analytic turn of his mind towards the subject. (Wiki)

Instinct is often misinterpreted as intuition and its reliability considered to be dependent on past knowledge and occurrences in a specific area. For example, someone who has had more experiences with children will tend to have a better instinct about what they should do in certain situations with them. This is not to say that one with a great amount of experience is always going to have an accurate intuition.

The Brain-Gut Connection

The connection between the brain and the gut is strong. The research concludes that your brain is transferring strong signals with your gut.

Scientific evidence shows a strong connection between chronic diseases and inflammation. Inflammation is most commonly rooted in the gut, where around 70 percent of our immune system resides. Our food choices result in oxidative stress, setting the stage for inflammatory ailments such as depression, anxiety, brain fog, obesity, and more. The health of your gut directly impacts the health of your brain. The gut communicates with our immune system and also communicates with the brain using, among other things, neurotransmitters. One function of neurotransmitters is that they send key messages to the brain, resulting in various effects on the body. Serotonin and dopamine are some well-known neurotransmitters that are typically associated with a good mood. In fact, while many believe that serotonin is primarily produced in the brain, it’s been found that up to 90 percent of serotonin is actually created in the gut.

Dr. Helen Messer, the Chief Medical Officer at Viome, which analyzes the gut microbiome, says ‘the bacteria in the gut make or consume the majority of neurotransmitters in our bodies.’ Essentially, if your gut is producing an adequate amount of mood-improving chemicals like serotonin, then it will send signals to the brain that will result in various benefits such as better sleep and satiety. It’s obviously more complicated than that, but that’s the general rundown. So how do you influence your gut to help it produce the good neurotransmitters and other compounds that make the mind feel better? A lot of it had to do with eating the right diet that your gut needs. (Futurism)

In addition to eating well for your gut, your brain can signal gastrointestinal issues.

Gastrointestinal conditions are incredibly common. About 20% of adults and adolescents suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a disorder where abdominal discomfort or pain go hand-in-hand with changes in bowel habits. These could involve chronic diarrhea and constipation, or a mixture of the two. IBS is a so-called functional disorder, because while its symptoms are debilitating, there are no visible pathological changes in the bowel. So it is diagnosed based on symptoms rather than specific diagnostic tests or procedures. This is contrary to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a condition where the immune system reacts in an exaggerated manner to normal gut bacteria. Inflammatory bowel disease is associated with bleeding, diarrhea, weight loss, and anemia (iron deficiency) and can be a cause of death. It’s called an organic bowel disease because we can see clear pathological changes caused by inflammation of the bowel lining.

Many experience anxiety and depression in response to the way the illness changes their life. But studies also suggest those with anxiety and depression are more likely to develop bowel disorders. This is important evidence of brain-gut interactions.

The brain and gut speak to each other constantly through a network of neural, hormonal, and immunological messages. But this healthy communication can be disturbed when we stress or develop chronic inflammation in our guts. Stress can influence the type of bacteria inhabiting the gut, making our bowel flora less diverse and possibly more attractive to harmful bacteria. It can also increase inflammation in the bowel, and vulnerability to infection.

Chronic intestinal inflammation may lower our sensitivity to positive emotions. When we become sick with conditions like inflammatory bowel disease, our brains become rewired through a process called neuroplasticity, which changes the connections between the nerve signals. Anxiety and depression are common in people suffering from chronic bowel problems. Approximately 20% of those living with inflammatory bowel disease report feeling anxious or blue for extended periods of time. When their disease flares, this rate may exceed 60%. (Psychlopaedia)

Not All Research Studies Point to the Benefits of Intuition

A new study says you should think long and hard and fight against your intuition.

Harvard Kennedy School professor Jennifer Lerner teamed up with Christine MaKellams of the University of La Verne to show that — contrary to popular belief — systematic thinkers are better at reading people than their intuitive counterparts, especially in unfamiliar situations. Their research paper was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

‘Cultivating successful personal and professional relationships requires the ability to accurately infer the feelings of others — that is, to be empathically accurate,’ the paper’s abstract read. ‘Some are better at this than others, a difference which may be explained in part by mode of thought.’

To determine which mode was the winner, Lerner and MaKellams ran four studies. The first was an online survey that asked participants to predict whether systematic or intuitive thinking would help them interpret emotions more accurately. Unsurprisingly, most people thought intuition would win. The two researchers then worked with executive-level professionals in studies two to four, randomly assigning each participant to either interview or be interviewed by another participant. At the end of the mock interview, both individuals were asked to assess their own emotions during the session and what they perceived their partner’s emotions to be. Lerner and MaKellams found, by comparing the assessments, that systematic thinkers were the ultimate context of real-life interviews, this means that your first impression is not always a good predictor of the kind of person you are facing, no matter if you are the interviewer or the interviewee. (Forbes)

The age-old proverb “don’t judge a book by its cover” indeed holds true. But here’s the challenge: We are wired to make quick judgments based on our assumptions, something MaKellams described as an automatic reflex. On the other hand, she said, systematic thinking is effortful, takes more time, and requires individuals to go through every aspect of a situation before making a decision.

The Bottom Line

Experts believe that it’s important to trust your gut and then follow up with scientific studies.

Indeed, the two thinking styles are in fact complementary and can work in concert – we regularly employ them together. Even groundbreaking scientific research may start with intuitive knowledge that enables scientists to formulate innovative ideas and hypotheses, which later can be validated through rigorous testing and analysis. What’s more, while intuition is seen as sloppy and inaccurate, analytic thinking can be detrimental as well. Studies have shown that overthinking can seriously hinder our decision-making process.

In other cases, analytic thinking may simply consist of post-hoc justifications or rationalisations of decisions based on intuitive thinking. This occurs for example when we have to explain our decisions in moral dilemmas. This effect has let some people refer to analytic thinking as the “press secretary” or “inner lawyer” of intuition. Oftentimes we don’t know why we make decisions, but we still want to have reasons for our decisions.

So should we just rely on our intuition, given that it aids our decision-making? It’s complicated. Because intuition relies on evolutionarily older, automatic, and fast processing, it also falls prey to misguidances, such as cognitive biases. These are systematic errors in thinking, that can automatically occur. Despite this, familiarizing yourself with common cognitive biases can help you spot them in future occasions: there are good tips about how to do that here and here.

Similarly, since fast processing is ancient, it can sometimes be a little out of date. Consider for example a plate of donuts. While you may be attracted to eat them all, it is unlikely that you need this large an amount of sugars and fats. However, in the hunter-gatherers’ time, stocking up on energy would have been a wise instinct.

Thus, for every situation that involves a decision based on your assessment, consider whether your intuition has correctly assessed the situation. Is it an evolutionary old or new situation? Does it involve cognitive biases? Do you have experience or expertise in this type of situation? If it is evolutionary old, involves a cognitive bias, and you don’t have expertise in it, then rely on analytic thinking. If not, feel free to trust your intuitive thinking.

It is time to stop the witch hunt on intuition and see it for what it is: a fast, automatic, subconscious processing style that can provide us with very useful information that deliberate analyzing can’t. We need to accept that intuitive and analytic thinking should occur together, and be weighed up against each other in difficult decision-making situations. (World Economic Forum)

Gary Klein, in his book, Intuition at Work, expresses the common wisdom when he says that intuition is “at the center of the decision-making process,” and that analysis is, at best, “a supporting tool for making intuitive decisions.”

Read my latest book: Eye of the Storm: How Mindful Leaders Can Transform Chaotic Workplaces, available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and Asia.

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