Basically title. All of us have sometime felt that intuition or gut feeling to do/not do something. What is that? Why do we get that feeling?
In: 0
This is debated.
Some people believe that humans have a “sixth sense” that can give them special insights about the world. In reality, humans have a lot more senses than that, but the name comes from there being five main senses. This sixth sense is typically claimed to be psychic or spiritual.
Others insist that it is a combination of your brain recognizing patterns and collecting data without you consciously thinking about it. You have an “intuition” that a co-worker is untrustworthy because they have little behaviors that you do not even realize that you are picking up on which your brain recognizes as matching untrustworthy people in the past.
Whenever this works, you remember it as an intuition. When it doesn’t work, you tend to forget about it. This means that it is easy to see this as more powerful or mysterious than it is. Other biases also make it seem stronger or more mysterious than it is, including retroactively having intuitions. These have been studied and shown to be there.
That in no way proves that the “sixth sense” isn’t real, but it does provide a caution when trying to decide if it is.
In reality, the second is definitely true, at least sometimes, because you can figure it out after the fact. The first may be true. You have to decide for yourself what you believe about the “sixth sense”.
Edited for a missing space, and, embarrassingly, writing “their” instead of “there”.
Latest Answers