Blog: That signal from Your Gut—Should You Trust it?
It was a typical Monday morning. The office hummed with routine ‘how was the weekend’ chatter.
The pantry buzzed with people trying to get their morning coffees before heading into the conference room for the weekly status meeting.
People filed into the room, continuing their morning chatter. Michelle walked in with her colleagues and settled into a seat.
The manager walked in. He was smiling, but to Michelle, it seemed forced.
He sat down, and the meeting began.
There was nothing dramatic or noteworthy about the meeting. It bordered on being mind-numbingly boring, even.
Yet something felt off.
Maybe it was the slight hesitation in his voice, missing his usual warmth. Perhaps it was the lack of eye contact or the way he kept glancing at his phone. Tiny things. Nothing obvious.
But Michelle felt her stomach churn. A quiet unease seeped in, a feeling she couldn’t shake off.
A few hours later—Ding. An email landed in her inbox.
Tough times. Budget cuts. Realigning resources.
She didn’t need to read the rest of the email. She knew. In fact, a part of her had known since the morning status meeting.
Subtle signals in the conference room had triggered an unconscious response in her body. The stomach-churning was a visceral clue—an instance of interoception, a heightened awareness of the body’s internal sensations.
Then several brain regions got to work: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmFPC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), responsible for pulling together, evaluating and assessing existing information, analysed her past experiences, detecting patterns similar to the manager’s behaviour, validating her gut signal. Something was amiss.
The insula, a region involved in bodily awareness, translated the physical sensation into an emotion—the feeling of unease.
The amygdala, the brain’s threat detector, flagged a potential threat by rapidly processing the subtle cues—the manager’s forced smile, his tone and inconsistencies in behaviour—that had deviated from past safe interactions with him. Before Michelle could consciously articulate her unease, the amygdala had activated the body’s stress response, sharpening her awareness that something was wrong.
Research suggests that people can make surprisingly accurate judgements in under 5 minutes, based on people’s facial expressions, tone and body language and with minimal information.
This rapid, automatic processing, often called intuition, is the result of interoception and pattern recognition working together.
Intuition is understanding something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning. This is commonly referred to as a “gut feeling”.
When does intuition serve us well? It is most reliable when grounded in knowledge, experience and a clear understanding of the context. When we have familiarity with a situation, our brain can quickly pick up patterns and make accurate judgements.
But it isn’t foolproof. It can be less reliable in unfamiliar or emotionally charged situations when our own biases or assumptions can cloud our judgment.
Sometimes, as in Michelle’s situation, we can intuitively assess a situation accurately but may not have the power to change the outcome. Yet, in these instances, intuition can still be useful as it offers something valuable—time. Time to prepare and act.
If Michelle had had more time, she could have begun updating her resume and started networking.
The key is knowing when to trust intuition and when to slow down and think deliberately when faced with a situation.
As a rule, for any important, complex or unfamiliar decisions, it would be best not to rely solely on intuition. In these instances, careful deliberation, seeking expert advice or weighing potential risks and benefits would be essential for decision-making.
Intuition is a useful guide, and when combined with careful thinking, it helps with handling life’s uncertainties.
References:
Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1992). Thin slices of expressive behavior as predictors of interpersonal consequences: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 111(2), 256–274. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.111.2.256
Craig, A. D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 3(8), 655–666. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn894
Critchley, H. D., & Harrison, N. A. (2013). Visceral influences on brain and behavior. Neuron, 77(4), 624–638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.02.008
Holzer, P. (2022). Gut Signals and gut feelings: science at the interface of data and beliefs. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.929332
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB2184891X
Sadler-Smith, E., & Shefy, E. (2004). The intuitive executive: Understanding and applying ‘gut feel’ in decision-making. Academy of Management Perspectives, 18(4), 76–91. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.2004.15268692
