Scientific American Mind-June/July 2007

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On an April morning in 2001 Christopher Bono, a clean-cut, well-mannered 16-yearold, approached Jackie Larsen in Grand Marais, Minn. His car had broken down, and he needed a ride to meet friends in Thunder Bay. As Larsen talked with him, she came to feel that something was very wrong. “I am a mother, and I have to talk to you like a mother,” she said. “I can tell by your manners that you have a nice mother.” Bono re- OOn plied: “I don’t know where my mother is.” After Bono left, she called the police and suggested they trace his license plates. July 1, 2002, a Russian Bashkirian Air- his decision to launch the Iraq war. As popular lines jet’s collision-avoidance system instructed books on “intuitive healing,” “intuitive learn- its pilot to ascend when a DHL cargo jet aping,” “intuitive managing” and “intuitive tradproached in the Swiss-controlled airspace over ing” urge, should we listen more to our “intui- southern Germany. Nearly simultaneously, a tive voice” and exercise our “intuitive muscle”? Swiss air traffi c controller—whose computerized Or should we instead recall King Solomon’s wis- air traffi c system was down—offered an instant dom: “He that trusteth in his own heart is a human judgment: descend. The Russian pilot fool”? overrode the software, and the plane began to These questions are both deep and practical. angle downward. They go to the heart of our understanding of the Larsen’s intuition was prescient. Police traced human mind. And the answers could provide a the car to Bono’s mother, then went to her apart- valuable guide in our everyday lives when we The Powers and Perils of ment, where they found her battered body in the bathtub. Bono was charged with fi rst-degree murder. The pilot’s instinct was also fateful, but tragically so. The two planes collided, killing 71 people. Such stories make us wonder: When is intuition powerfully helpful? When is it perilous? And what underlies those differences? “Buried deep within each and every one of us, there is an instinctive, heart-felt awareness that provides—if we allow it to—the most reliable guide,” Britain’s Prince Charles has said. But bright people who rely on intuition also go astray. “I’m a gut player. I rely on my instincts,” President George W. Bush explained to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post regarding must decide whether to follow gut instinct or use evidence-based rationality—such as when interviewing job candidates, investing money and assessing integrity. As studies over the past decade have confi rmed, our brains operate with a vast unconscious mind that even Freud never suspected. Much of our information processing occurs below the radar of our awareness—off stage, out of sight. The extent to which “automatic nonconscious processes pervade all aspects of mental and social life” is a diffi cult truth for people to accept, notes Yale University psychologist John Bargh. Our consciousness naturally assumes that its own intentions and choices rule our life. But consciousness overrates its control. 24 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND June/July 2007 COPYRIGHT 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. PHOTOILLUSTRATION BY AARON GOODMAN
Understanding the nature of our gut instincts By David G. Myers www.sciammind.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND 25 COPYRIGHT 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
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