The Anatomy of Intuition

What's your Intuition Quotient?

By Daniel Cappon, published on May 01, 1993 - last reviewed on August 30, 2004

The original instincts, now distilled as intuition, were probably based on a rapid access or fast-track system, separate from conscious thought, unencumbered by hesitation and doubt. Once speech was developed, allowing the transfer of information, the brain began its rapid expansion and evolved the ten-billion-cell neocortex. Here, logical, speech-promoted intelligence took over at the expense of experiential-based instinct. And the mind developed barriers, or censors, to protect the concentrated attention of clear, alert reasoning from invasion by all else stored in the brain; we now know that these barriers become porous during dreaming, defective in psychopathology, and collapse altogether in senility.

Intuition is, in my view, the product of all the processed ancestral instincts of the species, through which unconditioned reflexes become conditioned and organized into patterns of adaptive behavior called instinct. Ultimately instincts coalesce into intuition, the capacity for which is stored deep in the brain. The wisdom of language suggests that this is so. Despite the fact that many people have little respect for the concept of intuition (in these days of over-reasoning), all of us still refer to intuition as instinct. "It was an instinctive reaction." "I have a good instinct for this." Of course, the greatest evidence is simply the survival of the species in the face of extreme and unpredictable events of nature.

CRITICAL CONDITIONS

Intuition, then, is necessarily processed unconsciously. As a result, it has been reduced to a myth and allowed to sink into the province of mystics and fringe groups. Nevertheless, the descent of intuition from prehistory as a means of surviving changes and predators and finding ways to deal with enemies ensures that it is still the intelligence of everyday life. Human relationships, especially child-rearing, matching oneself to a mate and a job-these are the chief provinces of intuition. In its wholeness, intuition is the form of intelligence that includes our social sense, familiar with the endless variety of human relationships and deeds.

In elevating rational-scientific thinking, and dismissing intuition, the Enlightenment confined its approval to a very narrow band of human intelligence-logical, deductive, proof-oriented mental operations. That intelligence has brought us the scientific revolution, high technology, and a great many material goods. But it does not take an intuitive genius (all geniuses are) to observe that the wanton application of this line of thinking now endangers human society and its terrestrial home. The earth is so terribly befouled and overpopulated that our very advances now threaten our very survival. By their very nature, the study and control of these titanic forces cannot be accomplished by exact science.

Increasingly over the last decade, businesses have begun to realize that analytical thinking arrives too late for a 24-hour global marketplace. In its quest for an edge, private enterprise has become very receptive to the idea of intuition-although intuition has yet to make inroads in public management, marketing, or advertising.

As a way of advancing both the research and application of intuition, particularly in the business world, a Global Intuition Network (GIN) was set up in the late 1980s by Weston Agor, Ph.D., former professor of management at the University of Texas, at the behest of an American industrialist. Comprised of people all over the world who are working independently on intuition, the network sponsored its first conference in 1991, in Hawaii. Last summer, I convened the second GIN conference, in Toronto. By this time, there was important representation of serious scientists paying attention to research in intuition-engineers, mathematicians, and psychologists. Intuition is clearly undergoing rehabilitation.

But it isn't just scientists and business leaders who are interested in this power of the mind. Inquiries come from people in all walks of life-people eager to know that there is more to intelligence than science and technology have given us. They perceive the limits of the technological way of looking at things. They sense that a larger spectrum of intelligence needs to be brought to bear on the world's problems. Of course, creative artists have always known that creativity is cradled in intuition. If intuition were not already available today it would have to be invented.

MOWED DOWN IN THE FIELD

In my studies of intuition, I started where all scientific ventures start -- the hunch, itself an intuitive skill. I set out to prove the hypothesis that intuition is the secret of success in most endeavors, and especially in business.

I began with a field study of organizations, to see whether those that were successful had intuitive people at the helm. I wanted to see where those given to intuition-intuits were located on the organizational ladder, whether they were at key decision-making jobs. And to see whether those who weren't so located were unsuccessful. Success would be measured in terms of the world of business-bottomline profitability, efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness, with job satisfaction running as the dark horse.