what is actually happening psychologically/physiologically when you have a “gut feeling” about something?
In: Biology
Explained to a five year old:
There are three mice. There’s a city mouse (city, like where your grandpa lives), a suburb mouse (suburb, like where your friend, Mike, lives), a the rural mouse (rural, like where your aunt lives).
The city and suburb mice are visiting their friend the rural mouse one year and they’re have a lot of fun on the rural mouse’s farm. One day, they decide to walk around the fields and when they get to the far side of the farm they see a forest.
The suburb mouse sees all the trees and exclaims, “lets go check out the the forest,” and is about to run ahead. Hearing this, the city mouse feels like they can’t speak and shivers in fear. And before the rural mouse can even think, they reach out and hold back the suburb mouse from running off.
Now each one had a gut instinct about the forest but they were all different instincts. Fun for the suburb mouse, fear for the city mouse, and caution for the rural mouse.
See, the city mouse grew up never having been in a forest but all the forests in all the scary movies they watched made forests a bad place to go, so somewhere in the back of the city mouse’s brain seeing all those trees and hearing the word “forest” and being so out of their normal element made their “gut” say “fear.”
The suburb mouse, well, they grew up near parks and yards and well kept lawns and many had trees and bushes and so most of their experience was playing hide and seek and just generally running around and having fun. So when they saw the forest their subconscious, their “gut,” immediately said “fun.”
Now the rural mouse had live here all their life. They weren’t afraid of the forest like the city mouse was, but their gut told them to hold back the suburb mouse and so without really realizing it that’s what the rural mouse did. The suburb mouse asks, “why not?” And the rural mouse thinks for a moment and says, “we’re not supposed to go into the forest without boots and long pants this time of year because of all the ticks.”
Now the rural mouse wasn’t thinking that when they grabbed the suburb mouse; but because for years the rural mouse’s parents always made sure everyone was wearing such protective clothing before going into the forest, no one was ever allowed to go their without the boots and long pants, that it was their gut instinct to stop anyone from going in if they didn’t follow the same rule. But it also might have been because when the rural mouse was a child his parents had to grab him from running into the forest until he learned the rules.
So your gut instinct is like your (subconscious) brain pulling ideas from all of the experiences you’ve had so far and applying them to a new situation. But you don’t know which experiences its going to pull from and apply or even if they’re the best experiences to match the situation. If you drop your toy into the bathtub your reaction might be to quickly reach in and grab it which would be good and possibly save your toy and you just get a wet hand. But you could have the same reaction if you dropped it in the toilet. Or in a blender.
If you notice your “gut” telling you something then you should listen but you should also ask yourself why your having those thoughts, where they’re coming from, and why is your brain linking those thoughts with what’s happening to you right now.
Because if the city mouse were to do that then they would be able to realize that their fear was based on movies and scary stories and that they might actually have fun in the forest. And if the suburb mouse did that (and didn’t have the rural mouse to hold them back) then they could realize that they haven’t been in that forest and there might be bears or snakes or ticks or old mine shafts or anything else to watch out for. And the rural mouse could realize that their response was a good one but that maybe their friends were to old to just grab like that and that just saying “wait,” would be enough of a reaction for the next time visiting friends want to run off into the forest.
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