what is actually happening psychologically/physiologically when you have a “gut feeling” about something?
In: Biology
With personal interactions: There can be subconscious signals people give off, like their smile doesn’t seem genuine, so you have a “gut feeling” that there’s something shady about the person.
For stories where people “predicted” something bad, like “I had a gut feeling we shouldn’t go on vacation to that resort, and that resort was hit with a hurricane the week we were supposed to be there,” well that’s just good ol’ confirmation bias. You remember the rare times your “gut feeling” turned out correct, but ignore the many more times you had a “gut feeling” about something that didn’t turn out to be true. Also nobody tells stories about the times their gut feelings turned out to be incorrect; they only tell the stories when they turn out *correct,* thus it seems like gut feelings have way more legitimacy than they actually do.
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