In a large hospital Dr Rebecca Bingham happened to walk past a patient lying on a stretcher who was about to be wheeled into the operation theatre. Dr Bingham, on a sudden impulse, wanted to check the patient’s heart beat. When she put her stethoscope to the patient’s chest, she felt an abnormal blood flow through the heart. The doctor immediately alerted the surgeon about the patient’s critical condition. While postponing the operation the surgeon asked Dr Bingham what made her check the patient’s heart beat. She said it was “just a hunch.”
‘Hunch’ is a synonym for ‘intuition.’ Intuition is the ability to understand or know something because of a feeling rather than by considering the facts. If you have a hunch that something is true or will happen, you feel that it is true or will happen. Once, I attended an interview for the post of English Lecturer at a semi-government institution. There were about ten to 15 people waiting until they were called before the panel. The person who was interviewed before me came out of the room and settled down in his seat. He had a printed form in his hand. I had a hunch that he had been selected. When I decided to leave, he asked me why I was doing so. Then I told him that he had been selected for the post and there was no necessity for me to attend the interview. After some time I happened to visit the same institution to meet a friend. While waiting in the lobby I saw the successful man hurrying towards a classroom. When he spotted me he asked, “How did you know that I had been selected that day?” I told him it was only a hunch and I could not explain it.
Timothy D. Wilson, Prof of Psychology at the University of Virginia, says such hunches are prompts from the adaptive unconscious. It is a mechanism in the brain that processes an ocean of sensory information without our conscious mind being aware. The brain sorts out, infers causes and judges people and events in a strange way. According to Gary Klein, author of Intuition at Work, our hidden powers of perception allow us to see the invisible.
Conscious mind
At my own interview, clues lay under the surface of my conscious mind. Having gained experience in attending similar interviews had taught me the ground situation. Most interviews are held for show, sometimes long after selecting their preferred candidate. At certain interviews where I knew that I would be selected, they never bothered to have a look at my certificates. As I gathered more experience I could tell whether a particular interview was just a sham or not. Most interviews appear real to deceive people.
Most of us do not know that we have remarkably accurate intuitions that seem to spring from nowhere. We call such mysterious flashes of insights hunches, gut feelings, animal instinct, ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) or even a sixth sense. Psychologists are sceptical of reports of ESP that do not involve our known senses. However, most people believe in ESP although there is no sound documentation of the phenomenon.
A debate in one of the most prestigious psychology journals Psychological Bulletin has heightened interest in ESP. According to proponents of ESP, there is reliable evidence for an ‘anomalous process of information transfer’ or ‘psi’. Researchers who have collected considerable evidence argue that a cumulative body of research shows reliable support for the existence of ‘psi’. However, critics have challenged their findings. They say the research methodology was inadequate and the experiments supporting ‘psi’ are flawed. The renewed interest in ESP among psychologists is likely to inspire more research.
Power of intuition
Dr Klein, a cognitive psychologist from the Fairborn, Ohio, once a sceptic himself, no longer dismisses the power of intuition. He has studied people who have to make rapid decisions such as doctors, firefighters, intensive-care nurses and even ordinary soldiers. These people have no time to deliberate. Instead they have to make quick decisions. This can only be done with access to intuition.
Dr Klein interviewed a firefighter who depended on his sixth sense to save himself and others in a major fire. When he and his team were dousing the kitchen fire, he sensed that the room was getting extraordinarily hot. Sensing danger he ordered his men to rush out of the kitchen. Within minutes the kitchen floor collapsed. If they had remained there all of them would have perished.
Because of such incidents, psychologists pay more attention to ESP. If you speak to local fire brigade, they will come out with a host of similar incidents. In a do or die situation, you have only to trust your intuition. Recently, a pilot who was compelled to land his plane selected a sparsely populated area for the purpose of emergency landing. The plane crashed into a desolate place. But the problem remains whether decisions based on ESP or hunches are correct.
Warning signal
Intuition is a two-step linking and checking process. First, we rapidly sort out our memory. Then our unconscious mind remains vigilant for any unexpected events. If we get an uneasy feeling, it will increase our heart rate. Then we get a warning signal to remain alert.
Even when there is no emergency our internal radar is on alert for patterns that signal life-threatening incidents. For instance, a mother would feel some uneasiness when her daughter does not return home on time. If her daughter meets with an accident, she feels it immediately. How this happens is still a mystery. If psychologists are not prepared to accept this, what can they say about such strange incidents? Fortunately, mothers, more than fathers, are sensitive to the language of ‘gut communication.’
Our ability to read faces is another aspect of intuition. When you look at somebody’s face, sometimes you get a hunch. This stems from spotting ‘microexpressions.’ But such intense bursts of emotions last only a short time. Although ‘microexpressions’ do not explain everything we have every reason to trust our intuition.