Can we trust intuition?

BarcelonaEvery day we make more than 35,000 decisions, and more than 99% of them occur unconsciously. In other words, we use intuition practically without realizing it. And beyond what we might think, intuition has nothing to do with magic or hunches; it is a real, precise, and cultivable ability. Mikel Alonso, researcher and expert in applied behavioral neuroscience, and author of the book, "Intuition and the Intuition," discusses all of this. The value of intuition (Ariel, 2025).

"Intuition is an unconscious, subjective, and rapid mental process that is capable of accurately drawing probabilistic conclusions," explains Alonso. That is, automatically and unconsciously, the brain is constantly working to determine whether to make a decision, or how to do or not do something. However, there are many things that can be confused with intuition, but are not. Such as the sexual or survival instinct, which is something innate that has developed over thousands of years of evolution.

"The brain is primarily programmed for survival, and in the end, we let ourselves be guided by a quick, though not unfounded, decision, but that's not intuition," Alonso emphasizes. It's like when, according to the expert, a person who is attractive already believes they're also nice or a good dancer. Nor is the illusion of control intuition, like athletes who make the sign of the cross before going out onto the field. "They can't control the fact that they play a good game, but they can perform that ritual as a way of controlling the situation," he gives as an example.

Intuition, rather than being innate, is learned through experience. "The best decisions are made by intuition, because it encompasses all your knowledge, what you've learned formally and systematically, but also everything you learn on a daily basis and the conclusions you draw unconsciously," the author continues. Above all, he asserts that what has the greatest impact is meaningful experience, which should be varied and cultivated through trial and error.

Now, intuition doesn't guarantee you'll always be right. To understand this, Alonso explains in his book how intuition works. To begin with, our brain is constantly unconsciously gathering information in case it ever needs to make a decision. That's why things happen later, like when we meet someone one day who makes a facial expression we don't quite like. It's the brain that displays a series of information about things or situations that have happened to us before, based on other experiences. Later, the brain reaches a threshold where it has already made a decision and warns you with a weak emotion that you can feel in your body, what we colloquially call "a feeling."

However, it often happens that we yearn for a certain situation to happen, and this causes us to see everything from a very subjective perspective, or to be guided by stereotypes based on pre-existing prejudices. Or we get carried away by emotional judgments, such as when we're experiencing an emotion so strong that our body only offers us three strategies: flight, blocking, or fighting. If you have any of these emotions, it will be very difficult to listen to the feeling we may receive.

Train your brain

It's true that, to have intuition, you need to train your brain. However, some people are more intuitive than others. In the book, Alonso reviews the myth of female intuition and asserts that, after analyzing it from a neuroscientific, social, and evolutionary perspective, he concludes that women are indeed more predisposed to be intuitive than men. "While men focus on something very intensely, women have more areas of the brain dedicated to behavior, local memory, or peripheral vision," he points out.

In any case, if you want to train your intuition, you must first train your observation of your surroundings, not only through sight, but also through sounds and touch. Alonso also recommends practicing optimism: "This way, we use the brain's automatic mechanisms that aren't as urgent as fear," he clarifies. It's also important to have the attitude of learning a lot, especially new things, as well as accumulating meaningful experiences. "Don't always do the same thing in the same way, but rather do it in a varied and enriching way," he continues. Another point is to take action, even if it goes wrong or we make mistakes, because this gives us information to extract patterns for the brain. Investigating your feelings is also important, because each brain is different, and each module can warn you differently, such as making you dizzy or nervous.

In the end, Alonso maintains that it's important to listen to your intuition, especially when you're experts in a specific field, such as your job, if you've had a long history of experience. There's only one situation in which the author advises ignoring your feelings: love. "The body is immersed in a madness of neurotransmitters and intense emotions that prevent us from fully understanding what our intuition is telling us," he concludes.