“Intuition is reason in a hurry” – Holbrook Jackson, 1932 INTUITION

The ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning Is it a stand alone way of knowing? Or based on memories, feelings, imagination, or sense perception. Psychology – since 1998, two processes of thinking now recognized: *Automatic Processing (Thinking fast- intuition) *Reflective processing (Thinking slow – reason) *Heuristics – mental shortcuts and rules of thumb

Academic intuitions - naive Physics – impetus, vs Newton’s first law of motion Economics – Zero Sum Bias vs trade, or positive sum game Ethics – tribal vs global sense of right and wrong? - or, judging actions by consequences vs intentions

Social Intuitions First impressions – give an example of when you have had a correct one, and also an incorrect one. Subliminal perception – perception that operates below the level of conscious awareness Think class, gender, race…how do you make those judgments? Talk it over with another, and give an example

Amanda Knox, convicted in 2007, ‘her facial expressions and demeanor’

Dangers and Reliability Over confidence Inconsistency Experience – skills and social sense Feedback - such as mathematics, where you can check your intuition, or learning a skill – skiing, riding,etc. DangersRequirements for reliability

Cognitive Biases Confirmation Bias – selective thinking, or the tenency to notice things which fit with our beliefs Affect Heuristic – taking our gut feelings as an indication of merit Familiarity Bias – Natural inclination to believe/like what we already know (think – your cultural habits compared to others’) Fluency Heuristic – if it is easy to process, we will tend to believe it (good stories, intuitions of beauty) Framing Effect – 90% success rate, or 10% failure rate? 75% fat free or 25% fat?

More… Hindsight Bias – After the event, it is obvious, and therefore seems inevitable (2008 financial meltdown – fall of communism) Sunk Cost bias – once you have invested time, money, or effort in something, you should stick with it. Halo effect – all good, or all evil Think Mandela, or Stalin Just World Bias – we want to believe that good people are rewarded, and bad people punished. This ‘karma’ lens can lead to a blame the victim attitude Blind spot bias – our belief that OTHER people have biases, but we do not.

What is the difference between something being intuitively obvious and it being a deeply rooted prejudice? Give examples of things that once struck you as intuitively obvious which you no longer believe are true