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Six Sense and Sensibility
The Age
Anneli Knight
November 8, 2007
Scientists are getting closer to explaining the role of intuition in our decision-making.
The world is made up of two types of people: those who make decisions based on intuition and those who make them based on fact.
Dr David Haynes, from the University of South Australia, says there is a clear distinction between intuitive people, or those who get to the fundamental essence of things, and data people who prefer fact and detail.
"In my experience that is the biggest divider of people, even more than the extroversion or introversion divider," the senior psychology lecturer says.
This division also forms a key part of one of the world's most popular personality tests, the Myers-Briggs.
Carl Jung was the first psychologist to introduce intuition into the realm of psychology in the early 1930s.
But scientific research in this area has begun only in the past decade and still leaves many questions unanswered about what intuition is and which part of our brain it comes from.
Professor Con Stough, director at Swinburne University of Technology's Brain Sciences Institute, has done research into the role intuition plays in the decision-making of top female executives.
"We found that the more effective female executives had higher intuition," Stough says.
He says intuitive people make decisions more quickly and effectively because they are more easily able to call on their past experiences and emotions.
"What we find in ineffective leaders are people who are very analytical and don't incorporate any emotion or intuition in their decision-making.
"Emotions orient people quickly to the right decision and when people only make analytical decisions, they are having to reinvent the wheel every single time."
Stough says everyone has intuition and it is not a matter of developing intuitive skills but simply being open to them.
"A lot of people are closed to allowing intuition to affect them or allowing intuition to be a valued piece of information in the decision-making process," he says.
"If you don't use any intuition at all, you become like a computer - only making a decision with factual information and that factual information might not come in for a long time. Intuition allows you to make much quicker decisions and rely on your gut feelings and what you've learned previously."
Stough says a danger in relying on intuition can be when a negative experience informs your emotions or instincts more than is warranted, thereby swaying your decision making. This is a reason to try to be aware of your emotions and understand where they are coming from, he says.
Emotionally intelligent people are able to use their intuition as a conscious part of their decision making, Stough says. However, intuition is a subconscious process for many people.
Dr Sarah Edelman, a psychologist and lecturer at UTS, says intuition is having the ability to sense or know something without conscious reasoning. She says social intuition can occur when people pick up on subconscious signals to make judgments.
"There are some people who are much better at picking up subtle cues and making a judgment. Someone might say, 'I had a feeling that their marriage was on the rocks'. A person sensitive to subtle social cues might pick up evidence of a problem, even if the couple had seemed to be getting on," Edelman says.
Women are more likely to pick up on these cues, she says.
"Some people have a more finely honed ability to detect social cues and they are more likely to be women rather than men because of evolutionary psychology reasons, where women are more conscious of social and human responses."
These intuitive skills can be an inherent, subconscious trait or they can be learnt.
"Some people are just more people-focused and more interested in people. They might be very sensitive or have high levels of interpersonal skills," Edelman says. "And they can be learnt skills - very often people working in the area such as psychology will be taught to read subtle eye movements and facial expressions."
But the scientific evidence does not explain how people know things that have happened without prior knowledge or factual basis.
"When studies have asked people, 'Can you tell me what shape someone in the next room has drawn?' there is little scientific evidence that people can intuit that without a hint or prior knowledge. But there are anecdotal reports of people's metaphysical ability to know things going on on the other side of the world, such as 'I knew my twin had died on the other side of the world'," Edelman says.
Australian psychic and author Paul Fenton-Smith, head of the Academy of Psychic Sciences, says there are many situations where people have knowledge beyond the facts which they are able to gather from their intuition.
"Intuition is an inner knowing," Fenton-Smith says. "It is a part of you that knows things that isn't always in touch with a logical part of you."
Fenton-Smith says every individual has a higher, spiritual self that is able to understand consequences and see the bigger picture.
"The high self part of you understands and knows whether things will work or not. Intuition is access to the higher self and getting the information you need to," he says.
Fenton-Smith says it is possible to draw on your intuition through dreams, meditations and awareness.
"The simplest way is to still your mind and then listen to that small voice within."
Everyone is born with strong intuition but our logic-based education diminishes our ability to access it, he says.
Simple exercises, such as guessing who is ringing you or what colour the next car around the corner will be, are good ways to tap into your intuition. Fenton-Smith says you'll probably get it wrong the first 10 times but after that you'll start to hone your skills.
"The more you practise it the more reliable it becomes and the more you start to trust it," he says. While everyone has intuition, some people do have more natural ability at drawing on it.
"It's like singing - some people can be trained to sing in key, others can be trained to be opera singers."
While intuition can help guide decision making it can sometimes be very closely linked to imagination and should not be relied on in isolation, Fenton-Smith says.
"Good decision making is a combination of intuition and logic," he says.
In research scheduled for publication before the end of the year, a team of prominent psychology scholars have identified intuition as having the potential to unify lines of inquiry spanning cognitive, social, educational and organisational psychology.
The scholars, from the University of Leeds and the University of Surrey in Britain, and Swinburne, highlight intuition as a scientific concept that has come of age.
"The high self part of you understands and knows whether things will work or not. Intuition is access to the higher self and getting the information you need to," he says.
Fenton-Smith says it is possible to draw on your intuition through dreams, meditations and awareness.
"The simplest way is to still your mind and then listen to that small voice within."
Everyone is born with strong intuition but our logic-based education diminishes our ability to access it, he says.
Simple exercises, such as guessing who is ringing you or what colour the next car around the corner will be, are good ways to tap into your intuition. Fenton-Smith says you'll probably get it wrong the first 10 times but after that you'll start to hone your skills.
"The more you practise it the more reliable it becomes and the more you start to trust it," he says. While everyone has intuition, some people do have more natural ability at drawing on it.
"It's like singing - some people can be trained to sing in key, others can be trained to be opera singers."
While intuition can help guide decision making it can sometimes be very closely linked to imagination and should not be relied on in isolation, Fenton-Smith says.
"Good decision making is a combination of intuition and logic," he says.
In research scheduled for publication before the end of the year, a team of prominent psychology scholars have identified intuition as having the potential to unify lines of inquiry spanning cognitive, social, educational and organisational psychology.
The scholars, from the University of Leeds and the University of Surrey in Britain, and Swinburne, highlight intuition as a scientific concept that has come of age.
The Age
Anneli Knight
November 8, 2007
Scientists are getting closer to explaining the role of intuition in our decision-making.
The world is made up of two types of people: those who make decisions based on intuition and those who make them based on fact.
Dr David Haynes, from the University of South Australia, says there is a clear distinction between intuitive people, or those who get to the fundamental essence of things, and data people who prefer fact and detail.
"In my experience that is the biggest divider of people, even more than the extroversion or introversion divider," the senior psychology lecturer says.
This division also forms a key part of one of the world's most popular personality tests, the Myers-Briggs.
Carl Jung was the first psychologist to introduce intuition into the realm of psychology in the early 1930s.
But scientific research in this area has begun only in the past decade and still leaves many questions unanswered about what intuition is and which part of our brain it comes from.
Professor Con Stough, director at Swinburne University of Technology's Brain Sciences Institute, has done research into the role intuition plays in the decision-making of top female executives.
"We found that the more effective female executives had higher intuition," Stough says.
He says intuitive people make decisions more quickly and effectively because they are more easily able to call on their past experiences and emotions.
"What we find in ineffective leaders are people who are very analytical and don't incorporate any emotion or intuition in their decision-making.
"Emotions orient people quickly to the right decision and when people only make analytical decisions, they are having to reinvent the wheel every single time."
Stough says everyone has intuition and it is not a matter of developing intuitive skills but simply being open to them.
"A lot of people are closed to allowing intuition to affect them or allowing intuition to be a valued piece of information in the decision-making process," he says.
"If you don't use any intuition at all, you become like a computer - only making a decision with factual information and that factual information might not come in for a long time. Intuition allows you to make much quicker decisions and rely on your gut feelings and what you've learned previously."
Stough says a danger in relying on intuition can be when a negative experience informs your emotions or instincts more than is warranted, thereby swaying your decision making. This is a reason to try to be aware of your emotions and understand where they are coming from, he says.
Emotionally intelligent people are able to use their intuition as a conscious part of their decision making, Stough says. However, intuition is a subconscious process for many people.
Dr Sarah Edelman, a psychologist and lecturer at UTS, says intuition is having the ability to sense or know something without conscious reasoning. She says social intuition can occur when people pick up on subconscious signals to make judgments.
"There are some people who are much better at picking up subtle cues and making a judgment. Someone might say, 'I had a feeling that their marriage was on the rocks'. A person sensitive to subtle social cues might pick up evidence of a problem, even if the couple had seemed to be getting on," Edelman says.
Women are more likely to pick up on these cues, she says.
"Some people have a more finely honed ability to detect social cues and they are more likely to be women rather than men because of evolutionary psychology reasons, where women are more conscious of social and human responses."
These intuitive skills can be an inherent, subconscious trait or they can be learnt.
"Some people are just more people-focused and more interested in people. They might be very sensitive or have high levels of interpersonal skills," Edelman says. "And they can be learnt skills - very often people working in the area such as psychology will be taught to read subtle eye movements and facial expressions."
But the scientific evidence does not explain how people know things that have happened without prior knowledge or factual basis.
"When studies have asked people, 'Can you tell me what shape someone in the next room has drawn?' there is little scientific evidence that people can intuit that without a hint or prior knowledge. But there are anecdotal reports of people's metaphysical ability to know things going on on the other side of the world, such as 'I knew my twin had died on the other side of the world'," Edelman says.
Australian psychic and author Paul Fenton-Smith, head of the Academy of Psychic Sciences, says there are many situations where people have knowledge beyond the facts which they are able to gather from their intuition.
"Intuition is an inner knowing," Fenton-Smith says. "It is a part of you that knows things that isn't always in touch with a logical part of you."
Fenton-Smith says every individual has a higher, spiritual self that is able to understand consequences and see the bigger picture.
"The high self part of you understands and knows whether things will work or not. Intuition is access to the higher self and getting the information you need to," he says.
Fenton-Smith says it is possible to draw on your intuition through dreams, meditations and awareness.
"The simplest way is to still your mind and then listen to that small voice within."
Everyone is born with strong intuition but our logic-based education diminishes our ability to access it, he says.
Simple exercises, such as guessing who is ringing you or what colour the next car around the corner will be, are good ways to tap into your intuition. Fenton-Smith says you'll probably get it wrong the first 10 times but after that you'll start to hone your skills.
"The more you practise it the more reliable it becomes and the more you start to trust it," he says. While everyone has intuition, some people do have more natural ability at drawing on it.
"It's like singing - some people can be trained to sing in key, others can be trained to be opera singers."
While intuition can help guide decision making it can sometimes be very closely linked to imagination and should not be relied on in isolation, Fenton-Smith says.
"Good decision making is a combination of intuition and logic," he says.
In research scheduled for publication before the end of the year, a team of prominent psychology scholars have identified intuition as having the potential to unify lines of inquiry spanning cognitive, social, educational and organisational psychology.
The scholars, from the University of Leeds and the University of Surrey in Britain, and Swinburne, highlight intuition as a scientific concept that has come of age.
"The high self part of you understands and knows whether things will work or not. Intuition is access to the higher self and getting the information you need to," he says.
Fenton-Smith says it is possible to draw on your intuition through dreams, meditations and awareness.
"The simplest way is to still your mind and then listen to that small voice within."
Everyone is born with strong intuition but our logic-based education diminishes our ability to access it, he says.
Simple exercises, such as guessing who is ringing you or what colour the next car around the corner will be, are good ways to tap into your intuition. Fenton-Smith says you'll probably get it wrong the first 10 times but after that you'll start to hone your skills.
"The more you practise it the more reliable it becomes and the more you start to trust it," he says. While everyone has intuition, some people do have more natural ability at drawing on it.
"It's like singing - some people can be trained to sing in key, others can be trained to be opera singers."
While intuition can help guide decision making it can sometimes be very closely linked to imagination and should not be relied on in isolation, Fenton-Smith says.
"Good decision making is a combination of intuition and logic," he says.
In research scheduled for publication before the end of the year, a team of prominent psychology scholars have identified intuition as having the potential to unify lines of inquiry spanning cognitive, social, educational and organisational psychology.
The scholars, from the University of Leeds and the University of Surrey in Britain, and Swinburne, highlight intuition as a scientific concept that has come of age.
