The
Value of our Intuition in our Choice of
a Life Long Mate
Recent
research provides us with insight into the value of our intuition
in making choices for ourselves, from the simplest of decisions,
to what I believe to be the most important decision of our
life: the choice of a life long mate. And
what we can conclude from recent research cited in both academic
publications and the popular press, is really quite astonishing:
we should pay pretty close attention to what is in our gut,
what we refer to as our intuition, our sense of what is right
for us.
To
start, lets think about how an outfielder catches a baseball? It's
amazing, really. A ball's trajectory is described
by a complicated set of mathematical equations, but the human
brain has evolved over the years to solve a very complex problem
in a simple way: watch the ball and move such that the
angle between your eyes and the ball says constant. Kids
automatically follow this "gaze heuristic" in their
first game of catch, even though no one has explained it to them.
Our
brains have developed simple guidelines such as a heuristic
gaze to let us function in a complicated world. Gerd Gigerenzer,
Ph.D., a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development
in Berlin, writes that these rules form the basis of our intuition. Despite
what philosophers and economists have believed for centuries,
reason steeped in analytical assessment may not be the best decision-making
tool we have at our disposal. Rather, our gut instincts,
our intuition, may be equally as good.
Gigerenzer's research informed Malcolm Gladwell's
popular book Blink (Little, Brown, 2005), and provides
fascinating examples of situations in which our intuition is
accurate. Dr. Gigerenzer goes one step further to explain
why intuition is so frequently correct. Contrary to popular
belief, he argues, intuition is not based solely on impulse. Rather,
it has its own rationale rooted in the various abilities of the
brain that have developed over time through evolution. And
although the rules of thumb that guide intuition may be unsophisticated,
they are astonishingly accurate. These principals often
guide people who know very little about a topic to make choices
as good as those made by people who know a lot (read, psychologists
who are experts in human behavior and human relationships evidence
about the same divorce rate as non-psychologists). Another
example lies in people subconsciously assigning a more positive
value to something they recognize (such as a celebrity, a famous
city or a brand name) than to something unfamiliar. People
who know only a little about tennis but recognize the names of
a few famous players will predict tennis match outcomes nearly
as well as a TV tennis commentator will. We naturally assume
that the players whose names we recognize are more likely to
win, and indeed, they usually do.
If
we apply Gigerenzer's research to our lives, we can
look at how and in what way we use our intuition every day to
make decisions...from whom we choose to date all the way
to whom we choose to be our marital partners. In Gut
Feelings, Gigerenzer argues compellingly that what we feel
in our gut is informed by our brain, and by thousands of years
of experience. It seems that it is time that we gave our
intuitive sense of things some credence.
In
my work with cognitive behavioral skill development and mindfulness,
I often ask my patients to use intuition in their use of their
wise mind, paying close attention to both the input from their
rationale mind and their emotional mind. But these two
sources need to combine with one's intuition, their sense
of what to do, and then by stepping back inside themselves, one
can invoke their wise mind in whatever they decide to be
their final decision. We must not underestimate the value
of our intuition, this sense of what we want to do, in guiding
ourselves in the decisions that we make. Looking to what I believe
is likely the most important decision that most of us make in
our lives, i.e., the choice of a life long mate or marital partner,
I feel that too many people lose sight of what brought them together
at the very beginning of their relationship, and the value of
this. Very often we had a sense of what was right or not
so right about the person we chose to marry. And so often
when our sense of what is right is there, and we choose to marry
that person, those marriages often work out. And in those
instances when our gut told us that something was amiss, and
we choose to marry anyway, I think we see a greater likelihood
of problems. Now we have research to better understand the value
of "going with your gut".
Gigerenzer,
Gerd. The Logic of Intuition. Viking
Press 2007
Gladwell,
Malcolm. Blink. Back Bay Books. 2005
November 2007
