Why You (probably) Shouldn’t Trust Your Intuition

“Trust your intuition”.

We hear it all the time from self-help gurus who have a tendency to make baseless statements in order to motivate (or rack up Instagram likes), and this one is no different.

Why?

Let’s first define intuition.

The ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

Instinctively?

Innate, typically fixed patterns of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli.

Therefore, our intuition is essentially a hard-wired response to external stimuli.

So What Influences our Intuition?

I’m glad you asked. It turns out, it’s based on not one, but on many factors,

Evolution

Our behavior has evolved through natural selection. For example, our fight or flight responses are survival mechanisms that were critical whilst our ancestors sought out food or evaded predators on the African savannah tens of thousands of years ago.