"This is why your brain constantly searches for fast associations and routines that work. As children, we learn to avoid fire and step away from cliffs without thinking. As adults, we recognize what we like or dislike without much deliberation. We become fast judges of character. We learn to read a room. We even program ourselves to drive cars, operate machinery, or cook complex dishes without checking every step."
"Before you can think about it, you stretch awkwardly to grab it, slip, and fall to your death. What happened? Your brain reacted to a specific cue (a slipping object) and made a split-second decision that has worked a million times in your life: grab it before it falls. A natural, intuitive impulse. But it was the wrong move, because it ignored the particular situation you were in."
Fast decisions are effective when the brain applies practiced routines to familiar problems. Intuition consists of automatic associations and shortcuts formed by experience, enabling rapid actions like driving or avoiding danger. Intuition fails when those routines mismatch the specific context, causing harmful outcomes. Experimental research spanning thirty-one studies identifies when quick choices help and when they hurt performance. Intuition can be retrained by diagnosing faulty decision routines and replacing them with better-suited responses for particular situations. Two complementary modes of thought—intuitive automatic processes and slower deliberation—underlie the trade-offs between speed and accuracy.
Read at Psychology Today
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