What is intuition? A brief look at Damasio's proposal

How many times have we solved a problem based on our intuition? On how many occasions have we advised a friend: "trust your intuition"? But what is even more important: how many times our intuition has failed us?

Intuition or the sixth sense, as many also call it; It has impassioned many psychologists and, what is even more important, it has been at the base of great scientific discoveries and important decisions. However, that feeling that we have all experienced and that drives us to one place or another, to make a decision or another has been poorly explained in the scientific literature: some understand it as a flash of the unconscious and with this the understanding of it it is sunk in the shadows. However, to give a true answer to the question, what is intuition? Damasio offers us a proposal on which we can reflect.

Before explaining Damasio's theory, I must say that he is an author that I love with each book. He has had the misfortune (or the luck) not to write for the great public as Goleman has done for which most of his works are not well known beyond the psychological circles; nevertheless, The error of Descartes is a book totally understandable for those who try to scrutinize with more rigor the human brain. Precisely from this work I return some of his ideas to explain human intuition:

When we face situations that we must solve immediately, images related in one way or another to the fact in question are activated in our mind. These images in turn trigger painful or positive emotional memories that influence the decision we will make. For example, when we must decide whether to give another opportunity and make a romantic appointment with the boy in front of us, almost inevitably our memories of past relationships will be activated and these will determine the decision we make. All this process takes place consciously and therefore we will be more or less able to explain the reasons for our decision.

But in certain occasions this process takes place unconsciously causing us to incline by one decision or another. Then it is called intuition and many times we do not know how to explain with good reasons why our party.

Thus, the intuition would be nothing more than a preselection mechanism that goes below our level of consciousness and examines the different candidates, the various options and decides which will be the privileged ones that will become the possible paths through which the conscience may opt . Intuition would be a decanting mechanism of alternatives where our previous experiences and the emotionality related to them are essential.

Studies carried out in the 80s and 90s with nurses, doctors and businessmen showed that people who had been practicing for more years were more intuitive and, what is even more important: their intuition rarely failed. These investigations have been taken as a further clue to Damasio's theory: a broader experience gives us a greater background of images, which is why the sensory impressions that we have stored will help us to predict with a higher level of success the possible result. Simple question of statistics? Absolutely not, the experiences that become part of our unconscious and intuitive background are only those that have impacted us in some way, that have unleashed in us some feeling or reflection. Then, they exert their influence on our decisions based on an unconscious mechanism that can be more or less strong according to our training and even in relation to our beliefs and personological characteristics. Thus, there will be more intuitive people than others although they have quite similar experiences