Imagine if the director of a large company, before a historic decision to make, choosing announced following a precise criterion: the instinct. For goodness sake, could also happen, but - You object - the important choices should not be the result of weighted analysis, the sleepless nights expenses to consider every possible aspect?

Especially in the Western world, the assertion of rational thinking has relegated the insights to the domain of magical thinking, religious, primitive: our ancestors followed the instinct, but in time we have won the chance to affrancarcene. Yet, from a scientific point of view, intuition and feelings "skin" have untapped potential. As recalled by an analysis published on The Conversation, no silly answers, to be ignored or corrected by reasoning. They are only a different form of processing information.

Because the best ideas come when you least expect it

The same base. Even the insights derived from an evaluation and comparison process performed by the brain. It is often described as a complex machine that specializes in predictions, comparing the feelings and experiences of the present with what has been learned in the past, so predicting what is going to happen. When an unexpected occurs, the brain updates its models for the future. This incessant workings occurs automatically, without being noticed.

Something to report. The insights occur when the brain known a link or an inconsistency between the actual experience and the past, but this comparison does not reach the threshold of consciousness: in other words, we know that is so, but we do not know how we got there. For example, you are driving at night on a country road when all of a sudden you move to the right. A little further you notice a hole: it was not for that insight, it would have taken in full. Yet you had the view! In fact, the car in front of you had swerved slightly, at the same point: you have imitated without thinking, and you have done well.

When you have a lot of experience in a certain field, the brain has more information "on file" with which to make comparisons: it is in those moments that the insights are particularly reliable.

Inseparable. Often intuition and analytical thinking are seen as contradictory forces, as if you were to choose which to rely. In fact, they work in tandem and at the same time: the difference is that the former operates below the level of consciousness, and realize it only when it proposes a result. Usually, in fact, we resort to the belly and analysis simultaneously. Although an important scientific discovery can be born from an intuition that provides new and original hypothesis, and then be validated by rigorous analysis and testing.

In any case, if intuition has the reputation - at this point undeserved - of unsafe and risky option, if only rely on the reasoning can cause problems. Many studies have now shown that indulge in a logical excess may hinder the decision-making processes, without necessarily lead to better choices. Other times, we use analytical thinking to justify, or complicate, a decision already taken "belly" is the case of what we call moral dilemmas.

To cut corners. How to understand, therefore, if we can rely on intuition or not? A trick may be to assess the situation in which you find yourself. It is old (understood in an evolutionary sense) or new? Because if our instinct tells us that hunter gatherers is better filled up with donuts immediately, in anticipation of future famines, it is said that today this is the best choice ...

It could be subject to errors of judgment? For example, our choice could possibly be affected by the fact that we prefer options that confirm previous assumptions? Or the tendency to ignore negative information or dangerous? And then we have experience in that field? If we have, as we have seen, the brain has enough elements to work alone, without interference from the consciousness. But if we do not have, and the situation is completely new, perhaps it is better to reason about a minute.

From Focus