Elizabeth Greenwood
Appearances
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
The neuroscientists I interviewed say that intuition is pattern recognition based on expertise, based on having expertise in a certain domain. So what I really advocate for is people becoming experts in themselves. So if you have an intuition to say, go to that liquor store or to walk on the left side of the street that day versus the right side of the street,
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
i think that you should notice that and you should notice how that intuition shows up for you when you feel an urge or pull one way or another does that come to you as a sentence in your mind is it a feeling in your body and how is that different than say something else like anxiety or fear or just plain old habits that we are all accustomed to.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
So I really recommend people clocking when they have an intuition. I keep a note on my phone of these sorts of things, whatever kind of inclination I'm having that day, how I knew it and how it panned out, because then you do actually have some hard data to pull from rather than our very fallible memories and storytelling that we all do.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
It's such a great question. And it's a question that I was really interested in pursuing because I became interested in this topic, this question of intuition when I became a mother myself. And I felt I had this stream of kind of non-cognitive knowledge really kicking on in my body in this meaningful way. So I did want to find out about women's intuition. And here's what the research shows.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
There is a seminal study from the 1980s where they paired mixed groups of people, men and women. They assigned one person to be the boss and another person to be the subordinate. And what they found is that the people who were in the position of power did not have to have any awareness or empathy or intuition around their subordinate.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
The subordinate, however, had a heightened awareness about the boss, about what was going on with them, about what they were saying, thinking, feeling.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
So what that study has shown is that, quote unquote, women's intuition is really more about positionality and about people who are marginalized and have to have more of an awareness of the dominant group do tend to notice and exhibit more intuition toward that group than people who do not have to have that awareness.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
Let me give you an example. A friend had a 40th birthday party a few years back, and the party was just this amazing girls trip. We were going to fly to Milan, take the red eye, and then rent a car and drive up to the mountains to wine country to go to this wine festival. This is so dreamy. However...
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
Prior to this trip, I was having horrible nightmares about the car careening off the road, about doom and disaster. And I was feeling really some very, very... aroused very high level fear around this trip. Now, if I had not been thinking very deeply about intuition, it would have been really easy for me to say, my intuition says don't go on this trip.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
I'm just having a really bad gut feeling that something bad is going to happen on this trip. But what I did was I stopped and took a deep breath and tried to really examine what this fear was. Well, the fact of the matter is I was anxious because I was going with people I didn't know very well. I was anxious because I was in a car accident years ago.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
And I've always felt pretty uneasy about car travel, especially, you know, in a new country. after getting off a red eye and coach, et cetera. So I think that all of us will have responses to things that can feel very fast, very complete, and that looks like intuition.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
But if you are willing to dig a little deeper and dig into your personal history and think about what chords those feelings might also be touching, you can find that that actually could have something to do with past trauma, with past experience, that isn't exactly intuition. It might be something else.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
That's absolutely a piece of it, no doubt. Like I said, intuition is everything that's ever happened to you in a way. But if you want to become more wise and use intuition really as a more kind of sharp and refined tool rather than just a blunt instrument, you have to start kind of pulling back the layers a little bit.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
If every time my heart starts racing when I get into a car and I call that intuition, that's not exactly intuition. That is based on past experience, but that's more anxiety than intuition.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
Well, I think we could also say that about rational decision-making. I mean, I think that there are a lot of times when we follow the Excel spreadsheet and it still leads us to an outcome that we don't want. Again, I think this really all leads back to expertise, to becoming experts in ourselves, to monitoring those decisions that we make and how we're making them.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
You know, I think that dating is a great realm for this. What kind of impression did you have about this potential partner initially? And did that pan out or not pan out? I think that there are so many different realms of exploration for us to do this. And I think that intuition, again, it is synonymous with self-knowledge. So this is just kind of another way in to get to know yourself.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
And there are so many times I think that, you know, we have... It's possible you go on a date with someone who's great on paper. You know, they have the job, the career that you like. You have similar interests. You live in the same part of town. But then when you meet, there's something that just doesn't connect. And that's intuition, right? I mean, and that's really kind of, I think...
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
more valuable in a way is what that certain chemistry, that ineffable feeling is. So you can call that intuition, you can call it chemistry, but it is that kind of data that will not show up on paper, that won't show up on the dating profile that is important to listen to.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
Well, Mike, I hear you. I don't think you're alone in that feeling toward intuition of what even are we talking about when we talk about intuition? Is it just this out there woo-woo thing? So I hear you there for sure. I spent several years interviewing experts of all
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
all stripes, ranging from neuroscientists to gastroenterologists to data scientists to people on, you know, more the other end of the spectrum, intuitive practitioners such as Reiki healers, etc. It goes on and on. But I think that the most useful definition I came across
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
You go on a date with someone who's great on paper. You know, they have the job, you have similar interests. But then when you meet, there's something that just doesn't connect. And that's intuition, right? That kind of data that will not show up on paper.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
comes from neuroscience and that is that intuition is pattern recognition that happens incredibly quickly and it's based on prior experience and it shows up in biofeedback in your body. And this is an adaptive trait and we all have it. So what does that mean? It means you walk into a room and you get some kind of vibe from that room.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
Maybe you feel comfortable at ease and your body kind of exhales, sighs a little breath of relief, or you walk into that room and your throat constricts and you feel uncomfortable. Maybe you don't even notice your throat constricting, but there's something happening in your body giving you a signal based on prior experience. So it's as simple as that.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
It's pattern recognition that happens incredibly quickly.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
That's right. And intuition can feel magical. And that's because intuition is knowledge that is not always linear. It's not always, I can't say how I got from A to B. And that can make you doubt it. That can make it feel mystical. Because intuition is really this very complex...
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
ensemble of neurological functions such as memory activation all of these things working in tandem um to come up with getting quote an intuition a gut feeling it's also a very embodied experience and that's why we hear it called a gut feeling so sometimes an intuition will come to you in a physically embodied way. And in our culture, we've really separated the brain from the body.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
So when we get something that feels like our body knowing something, we do have a tendency to distrust that or lump it in as something that is irrational. when really we store so much of our memories and emotions in our bodies. So it's not that this is irrational. It's just another form of rationality. And it's always based on past experiences. This isn't based on nothing.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
Sometimes an intuition can come out of the blue and feel almost mystical, but it's, always based on prior experience. Intuition in that way is everything that's ever happened to you.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
You'd have to ask neuroscience and linguists that question. I can't really answer that. But I will say that there are neuroscientists and people working in the sciences that do study intuition. They don't have a different name for it. This is just what we've conquered.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
called it, and I totally hear you that this does feel like something that is a collective wisdom, but I think intuition also is very personal for people. It's knowing without knowing why, and the ways in which people know can be very different from person to person. Some people are more verbal. Some people are more somatic, embodied.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
But it is that knowing without knowing why and being able to trace point A to point B. But this is a highly adaptive trait. This is something that evolutionary psychologists look at. And I think at its most essential, it is a kind of protective instinct of toward or away. When you place a... paramecium in a petri dish and put sugar in it, the paramecium will swim toward the sugar.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
It will swim away from an electric shock. And that, in its most essential, is a form of intuition.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
Well, there are several metrics that scientists use to study intuition, and the most famous among them is called the Iowa Gambling Task. And this was developed in the 1990s by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. So the Iowa Gambling Task is this.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
there are two decks of cards one deck pays winnings when you select from that deck and the other deck uh and the other set of cards deduct winnings and this is they you really mix it up and make it in this very complicated system where there is a system but it's really hard to figure out Meanwhile, scientists are monitoring the participants biofeedback.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
And what they notice is that people running the experiment, they are recording signals from participants bodies that measure when people are considering the bad choices, the cards that deduct winnings versus the good choices. And what they find is that people are often completely unaware of those signals, but in the end, they learn to make the good choices based on this low-level biofeedback.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
And they really can't tell you why. They'll just say, oh, well, this card seemed like the right card to choose. They might feel a sense of kind of being repelled by the quote-unquote bad cards. So the people who are more interoceptive, more aware of these very subtle bodily cues, they are drawn to the profitable decks. and they stay away from the low-paying decks.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
So that's just one example of a test that people run to measure intuition.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
I think that's right.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
And I think that what studies have shown also is that this really comes from Daniel Kahneman's research in thinking fast and slow, but it dates back to even Benjamin Franklin writing about this phenomenon in his autobiography, is that we like to tell ourselves this story that we are rational beings and we've made decisions based on all the data and evaluating things with a cool head.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
But more often than not, we make decisions intuitively. We make decisions based on something that is emotional or that we can't even put words to. And then we will go back and post hoc reasons for why that makes sense rationally. So I think it cuts both ways.
Something You Should Know
The Science Behind Your Intuition & How Things Get Made
I hear you. And I think that that is a great example of a memory bias of the way in which we will prioritize a story that we like that really kind of rhymes with our worldview. What I really like. emphasize for people who do want to become more intuitive or become even just more familiar with the way intuition shows up for them is becoming a little bit systematic about it.