📝 usncan Note: A Psychologist Explains The Surprising Truth About ‘Gut Feelings’
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That instant certainty you feel while making decisions isn’t magic. Research shows that your gut feelings may guide you faster than logic.
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At certain times in life, you may have found yourself standing at a crossroads. Feeling torn between what seems logical and what your gut insists to be right is a dilemma most of us have faced. This could be for a career move, a relationship choice or even something as small as sending that late-night message. During these important decisions, you might find yourself wondering whether to trust the mind that reasons or the feeling of simply “knowing.”
When we think of intuition or what we often call a “gut feeling,” it can feel like a hard-to-pin-down concept. Most of us don’t know for sure what intuition really is. Is it just a hunch? A lucky guess? Or is it something deeper at work in the mind?
Intuition And Insight
To understand intuition better, researchers of a 2016 study published in Frontiers in Psychology set out to explore how it differs from another often-confused mental process, which is insight.
They looked at puzzles where three words seem unrelated but secretly connect to the same solution. For instance, the words “cottage, swiss, cake” all point to the word “cheese.”
With these kinds of puzzles, they could track whether people were slowly sensing they were on the right path (intuition) or suddenly seeing the solution all at once (insight). The findings highlight that intuition and insight are not interchangeable no matter how similar they are on the surface. They rely on different cognitive mechanisms.
Both are forms of non-analytical thinking. However, they unfold in very different ways. Simply speaking, intuition is more of a gradual and experience-based knowing that builds beneath the surface. On the other hand, insight is the sudden “aha!” moment when a solution clicks all at once.
In other words, they are two sides of the same coin. Recognizing which one you’re experiencing can make you more aware of how your mind is solving life’s complicated decisions.
If you realize you’re relying on intuition, you might give more weight to subtle patterns and past experiences quietly influencing you. This can seem helpful in areas like relationships, where gradual cues matter. Recognizing an insight, on the other hand, reminds you that your brain just restructured a problem in a new way. So those ideas of clarity might be especially valuable for creative breakthroughs or problem-solving.
How Anxiety Impacts Your Intuition
“Trust your gut” is very common advice. And while that is helpful, there can be times when what feels like a gut feeling could actually be anxiety or overthinking in disguise.
You may have faced moments when differentiating between the two can be hard. Intuition is supposed to guide you, but when anxiety or your overthinking steps in, it can feel just as strong.
This overlap can be confusing. In a 2017 study, researchers wanted to find out whether anxiety gets in the way of intuition.
To test this, they brought in over 100 healthy participants. These participants were randomly put into three groups. One group had their anxiety triggered, another was put in a positive mood and the last remained neutral.
Afterward, everyone completed a semantic coherence task, a puzzle-like test designed to measure intuition. In this task, intuition is reflected in whether people can suddenly sense connections between things without consciously reasoning them out.
People in the anxious group performed worse on intuitive decision-making than those in the neutral or positive groups. Interestingly, this wasn’t just about personality. Trait anxiety (whether someone is generally more anxious) didn’t change the results. It was the state of being anxious in the moment that disrupted their ability to rely on intuition.
So anxiety seems to block the brain’s natural ability to detect hidden patterns and make intuitive leaps. This means that when you’re anxious, your “gut feeling” might not work as reliably. This leads to poor decisions or indecision altogether. This finding has clinical implications, suggesting that managing anxiety could help people make better use of their intuitive strengths.
Telling Intuition Apart From Overthinking
Here are a few simple ways you can start to tell whether a feeling is a true gut instinct or just a consequence of your overthinking:
- Notice the speed and clarity. Intuition feels sudden but clear. Your mind “just knows” the answer without effort. There’s a sense of calm certainty, even if you can’t explain why. However, anxiety feels urgent and cluttered — racing thoughts, “what-ifs” and self-doubt dominate your mind. It often cycles endlessly without reaching a clear conclusion.
- Notice the physical sensations. Intuition may bring a gentle nudge or subtle bodily cue, almost like a sense of alignment in the form of “this feels right.” Anxiety, however, usually triggers stress responses, which can manifest in a tight chest, sweaty palms, a racing heart or restlessness.
- Notice the emotional tone. Intuition most likely feels neutral and guides without pressure. Anxiety comes with fear, worry or dread. It pushes you to make a decision out of discomfort rather than insight.
- Notice where your thoughts are focused. With intuition, you see the answer emerging naturally and most often being solution-focused. With anxiety, you’re stuck in hypothetical scenarios. You end up overanalyzing past and future possibilities without clarity.
- Notice the time and effort involved. Intuition arises effortlessly and quickly. An anxious mind takes up mental effort. You might obsess over options and weigh “what-ifs” repeatedly.
Why Do People Rely On Gut Feelings?
Even when you have all the information at hand to make a carefully thought-out, informed decision in a logical sense, you might still find yourself making decisions based on gut feelings. Despite deliberately made logical decisions seeming like the safer option, there’s a reason why you might lean more toward your instincts.
A 2022 study published in Cognition shows us why this happens. Researchers conducted five experiments with hundreds of participants and found that people treat intuition and deliberation differently depending on the type of decision they face.
Results showed that choosing intuitively often leads others as well as the person making the decision to see the choice as authentic or reflective of personal commitment. In contrast, deliberative choices are seen as more calculated or logical.
The studies also showed that when people were explicitly reminded of the importance of authenticity, they were more likely to rely on intuition and trust their gut, even when expert advice or algorithms were available. These effects remained true regardless of factors like task complexity, objectivity or reliability.
Gut feelings can be tied to your internal sense of authenticity. Sometimes, following your intuition is about making choices that feel personally meaningful. This also explains why in areas like romance, creativity and identity-related choices, people value gut feelings. Meanwhile, in technical or logical domains, deliberation is favored.
Sometimes, certain decisions feel easier than others, even when both types of choices (intuitive and logical) seem important.
In a recent interview, researchers Ian Krajbich, Blair R. K. Shevlin, Stephanie M. Smith and Jan Hausfeld, who studied why people are naturally better at making important decisions, explained to me, “Contrary to our expectations, we found that people find high-value decisions less difficult. In other words, people are faster and more accurate for high-value decisions than for low-value decisions.”
Their work suggests that the perceived value of options can shape how your brain approaches a decision. This influences whether you rely on gut feelings or more deliberate reasoning.
Listen To Your Gut With Clarity
Gut feelings are not mystical. They are your brain’s subtle way of processing patterns and personal values, often faster than conscious reasoning allows. Yet, it’s important to remember that intuition is not immune to interference. So, it’s possible for your anxiety, overthinking or emotional turbulence to distort or drown out these signals.
The key lies in cultivating self-awareness. Learning how to notice cues from your emotions, thought patterns and body can help you distinguish genuine intuitive guidance from fear-driven impulses.
Trusting your gut is less about blindly following a “feeling.” Essentially, you are just tuning into your inner radar with clarity and calm. When mindfulness and emotional balance, your instincts can serve as a compass. This can help you make decisions that feel authentic and meaningful.
Before making a decision, try to prioritize how you want to make the decision, how important it is to you and in what way it matters. Even in situations where logic seems to provide you a clear answer, what seems rational may not always feel right or make sense for you personally. Integrating both instinct and reason allows you to navigate life’s decisions with confidence and a deeper understanding of what truly matters.
Discover whether you rely more on logic or intuition when making big decisions. Take the science-backed Intuitive Decision Style Scale to find out.
