Why You Should ALWAYS Go With Your Gut
Have you ever felt a sneaking suspicion, a reckoning deep in your gut, that turned out to be right?
It’s a weird, disarming feeling — to be suddenly bombarded by the absolute certainty of something, despite there being no reasonable explanation for it. It’s like when you meet someone for the first time and automatically know that they’re “the one”. Or when you enter a room and get an uncomfortable vibe, like the atmosphere seems heavy. Or even when you feel the need to reject a high-value client whom you’ve been doing business with for years.
During moments like these, we’re seized by a powerful visceral feeling that helps us decide what to do: Marry this person. Get out of the room. Walk away from the deal.
But the question is, should we trust our instincts?
The Science Behind Instinct
In his book, “Blink”, award-winning author Malcolm Gladwell talks about the powerful backstage mechanisms that work in our subconscious. It’s this process that allows us to have the ability to accumulate huge stores of data that are several generations old. It also gives us the ability to filter, blend, and segregate the data then come to surprisingly accurate conclusions almost instantaneously.
In fact, Gladwell tells of a story about an ancient Greek statue that got the attention of art enthusiasts the world over. Getty Museum in California took a particular liking to the piece of art: standing at almost seven feet tall, the statue was amazingly preserved. It was priced at a whopping $10 million, and so the Getty arranged for all the normal background checks on the statue before finally taking it home.
To assure its authenticity, a geologist was called in, who determined that the marble used for the piece was sourced from the ancient Cape Vathy quarry, on the island of Thasos. From the thinnest layer of calcite covering the statue, he said that they only accumulate on stone over a period of hundreds or even thousands of years.
Concluding it as genuine, the Getty quickly lapped up the purchase. But then Frederico Zeri, an art historian, saw the statue and instantly found it to be a counterfeit. A second art historian saw the piece and said the first word he thought of when he first laid eyes on it was “fresh”, which is not a term you associate with an artifact dating from the sixth century BC. And yet another art expert was hit by a wall of “intuitive repulsion” upon first seeing it. All of them observed that while its form and craftsmanship resembled ancient statues, it was lacking in ‘spirit’.
Worried about the multiple accusations stating that their prize statue was a fake, the Getty made further investigations into the true history of the piece. They held a conference in Greece, and had the foremost minds in ancient art study their precious statue.
Lo and behold, they eventually found that the statue was the work of skilled Roman forgers and was actually made in the early 1980’s. The work of several teams of professional analysts spanning 14 months of thorough research was trumped by the intuitive abilities of historians who just ‘sensed’ that something was off.
The Brain and Instinct
While instinct is sometimes referred to as ‘gut-feel’, it comes from a place quite far from the stomach. Although this powerful sense of foresight arises from different regions of the brain, in general, instinct is created in the area where creative thought, music, movement, and emotion also originate — the right hemisphere.
The brain’s cerebellum (Latin for "little brain") is located in the lower area of the brain, below the pons. Its main function is taking charge of the balance and coordination of muscles and the body, but it also plays a role in the development of hunches. A more specific region of the brain that could be responsible for our instinctual behavior is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. It’s instrumental in storing data related to past punishments and rewards, as well as in processing risk and fear.
In a study conducted by a neuroscientist from the University of Iowa, Antonio Damasio, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in people with normal processes and those with damage to that specific part of the brain were compared. Results showed that this area is able to elicit the emotional feedback that people call their gut feelings or hunches.
What About Impulses?
Despite often being used interchangeably, instinct and impulse are two separate things altogether.
An action is considered to be “impulsive” when it’s not prefaced by a significant amount of careful deliberation. To put it simply, impulsive actions are executed with a sense of urgency, or with a show of force.
A person acting on impulse ignores the pros and cons and makes choices on the fly, without slowing down to consider the benefits and the challenges that come with the decision. Impulsive behavior is generally irrational, seldom deliberate, and therefore, often seen as “bad”. It’s that instant rush of uncontrollable desire that pushes you to reach for another slice of chocolate cake, and makes you say hurtful things to someone without meaning to.
But does this character trait really deserve the negative rep it’s getting? Not necessarily.
For “impulse expert”, Kimberly Kirkpatrick, impulsiveness varies from individual to individual. Being a Kansas State University professor and researcher of Psychological Sciences, she probably knows what she’s talking about.
According to her, “Impulsivity is a multifaceted construct and so individuals can be impulsive in different ways. One individual may have difficulty inhibiting actions, whereas another individual may have difficulty seeing the value of waiting for better long-term outcomes.” This means that a person’s impulsiveness could be bad, but not all the time.
Even science says that being impulsive may not universally be harmful. That is, according to a new study spearheaded by Doctor Zachary Mainen, a neuroscientist at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York. His research, which dealt with the neurological processes of decision-making, found that decisions made off-the-cuff are actually just as good as those taken after serious thought.
Tests meant to study intuition were administered to rodents wherein a series of perceptual decision challenges were set up for them to figure out. Through this experiment, the scientists discovered that the rodents’ performance and output when they sped through the maze was exactly the same as when it took them longer to finish. Even after intentionally encouraging the rats to slow down, peak performance was attained in less than 300 milliseconds.
Dr. Mainen explained, “There are many kinds of decisions, and for some, having more time appears to be of no help at all. In these cases, you’d be better off to go with your intuition, and that’s what our subjects did.”
Similarly, these findings may provide insight into what goes on inside the human brain during the making of perceptual decisions. Dr. Mainen elaborated on the results, saying: “Decision-making is not a well-understood process, but it appears to be surprisingly similar among species.”
It’s a characteristic typically associated with maladaptive, addictive tendencies: substance abuse, obesity, gambling, and alcoholism being the most common examples. But every now and then, in-the-moment choices may actually serve to benefit rather than harm you.
"It’s good to have a bright analytical brain, but at the end of the day, the stomach is the smartest organ in the body."
Julie Benezet
Sometimes, the will to be rational stifles the voice that can inadvertently point us to the right direction. Our instincts give us a window into the vast database in our minds where we store past experiences, personal values, and inconvenient truths. It's not simply a passing feeling. Your gut deserves as much value as your brain does.
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Flora Paredes is a self-described creative who leans into her words more than her other skill sets. She currently works as a freelance Content Marketing Manager for an international tech company while studying to be a pastry chef on the side, just for funsies.