WOK: Intuition Navi Chawla
Navi Chawla
Katya, Antoine, and Alex
WOK Badge: Intuition
Should our intuition be trusted?
Progress Journal
3-6-17:I had a general idea of what intuition was but I didn’t know that many details about it such as how it is a quick and unconscious WOK which is usually unreliable. However, it is still important because it is much quicker than any other WOK; this is extremely valuable in cases when one has to make decisions quickly and without hesitation.
3-8-17: Although intuition has been shown to be unreliable in most instances, people still tend to rely on it more than other Ways of Knowing disregarding its untrustworthiness. A psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts demonstrated that people often ignore probability or logic when their “gut” intuition gives them a different answer. Participants tried to draw a red jelly bean from jars of either 10 or 100 beans in which the majority of the beans were white. The hundred-bean jar contained seven red beans and the ten-bean jar contained a single red bean Even though the odds of drawing a red bean were better for the ten-bean jar (10%) than the hundred-bean jar (7%), more participants chose to pick from the hundred-bean jar. Their reason was that because the hundred-bean jar actually had more red beans, they would fare better in that jar due to there being more red beans to pick. It was found that conflicted participants, though fully aware of their irrational decision, trusted their intuition that more red beans meant better chances to win over their understanding of probability. In this experiment, even after the participants understood that the decision they were making had a lower chance of picking a red bean, they would still trust with the answer they originally chose with their intuition even if it was incorrect.
3-10-17: The paragraph that I wrote has a relevant real life example with in depth analysis; however, the topic sentence and conclusion could be improved upon. I think my thesis statement could be a bit longer and more detailed but it still contains all the important points that I want to make.
Elective Reading: Gladwell, Malcolm. from Blink. “The Statue that Didn’t Look Right.”: This elective reading was interesting because it showed a different viewpoint to our question; it showed how intuition could be useful which the majority of my group was against. The contrast of the strong “rational evidence” for the statue’s value with art historians’ instinctive hunches that the statue was “wrong” in some fundamental way was a unique way to express his opinion that intuition can be more accurate than rational thought.
Documentation and Essential Question: Should You Trust Your Intuition?
Due to its unreliability in most instances, we can not trust our intuition to be correct. The quickness of intuition is also its downfall because people often make mistakes when they are not given the opportunity to think about decisions that they have to make. A psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts demonstrated that people often make incorrect decisions when asked to quickly answer a question. They would often use flawed logic that is incorrect. Participants tried to draw a red jelly bean from jars of either 10 or 100 beans in which the majority of the beans were white. The hundred-bean jar contained seven red beans and the ten-bean jar contained a single red bean Even though the odds of drawing a red bean were better for the ten-bean jar (10%) than the hundred-bean jar (7%), more participants chose to pick from the hundred-bean jar. Their reasoning was that because the hundred-bean jar actually had more red beans, they would fare better in that jar due to there being more red beans to pick. When answering quickly, this answer would somewhat make sense to the participants even though it is incorrect. In this experiment, their quick “gut” instinct was incorrect and they were able to get the correct answer after they were given more time to reexamine the question.
Extension: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=should+you+trust+your+intuition&*: This article would be a good extension because it warns about the dangers of ignoring your intuition. Your body and unconscious mind can often sense things that your brain cannot which is why intuition is so useful.