The science of intuition

Intuition is not magic. Intuition is something that cognitive scientists have been studying in depth for the past 40 years. Starting from the 70s and 80s, early versions of computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allowed them to see what actually happens in the brain while the mind is thinking, just like watching a video.

This is how scientists came to the conclusion that the mind is divided into two: an intuitive mind and an analytical mind. Thinking is the result of the constant and inextricable interconnection between these two minds. Learning how all this works will help us appreciate the importance of intuitive thinking and, more importantly, help us understand us how to apply it optimally.

1. The ‘two minds’ model

Today, the most prominent theoretical framework for explaining thinking concerns the dual process theories of cognition. Keith Frankish and Jonathan Evans describe the central idea of this position as follows: “Dual-process theories hold that human thought processes are subserved by two distinct mechanisms, one fast, automatic and non-conscious, the other slow, controlled and conscious, which operate largely independently and compete for behavioral control. In their boldest form, they claim that humans have, in effect, two separate minds.1” In academic literature the two processes are known as System 1 and System 2. The two systems have also been given various labels, such as experiential–rational2, automatic-intentional3, or unconscious–conscious4. Regarding studies on intuition, the distinction used is that between the intuitive mind (System 1) and the analytical mind (System2)5. Let’s see how they work.

System 1

The intuitive mind

The intuitive mind corresponds to the cognitive unconscious6. This is unconscious intelligence, which is constantly at work to solve problems, even when the mind appears to be resting or focused on something else. It is different from the Freudian interpretation of the unconscious, which concerns repressed drives

Human beings have, metaphorically speaking, ‘two minds in one brain’: an intuitive mind and an analytical mind.

The cognitive unconscious is like a huge computer that stores everything learned in the course of a lifetime. By “everything” I really mean everything, even what may have been caught unwittingly with the corner of our eyes. So, the unconscious mind is like an enormous database with millions of chunks of information whose existence we are not even aware of. When trying to solve a problem, the mind crosschecks all the information acquired about a particular problem with the information already stored, and generates an infinite number of possible permutations, until everything is condensed into the optimal solution. The solution then emerges in the conscious mind in the form of an intuition or insight.

System 2

The analytical mind

When one of the ideas processed by the unconscious mind emerges at the conscious level and draws attention, the analytical mind will start reprocessing it. Analytical thinking works according to the “if … then …” logic: if this happens, then that will follow. This is also known as ‘linear’ thinking because it follows a straight line: C is consequential to B which is consequential to A. Another definition of analytical thinking is that of ‘ordinary’ thinking, since it is the kind of thinking that typically requires little effort. Psychologists also call this “reactive” thinking, because it often occurs as a mechanical reaction to external stimuli that do not lead to truly original and creative solutions: “If this happens, then I’ll do that.”

How do the two minds differ? According to scientists, what ultimately differentiates the two minds is processing power. On one hand, the intuitive mind can process up to 11,000,000 bits of information per second; on the other, the conscious analytical mind will not exceed 110 (yes, just a mere 110)7. These estimates are of course speculative and vary from study to study, but their purpose is to show the significant difference in order of magnitude. The analytical mind’s processing power is limited by its working memory, namely the amount of information we can store consciously while thinking something through.8 In his ground-breaking paper “The Magical Number 7 ± 2”, Miller9 showed that a person can consciously retain only about seven “chunks” of information at a time. The consensus of present-day memory researchers is that the human working memory can process three to five chunks of information at a time10.

To summarize: by continuously cross-referencing information and producing new permutations, the intuitive mind keeps on generating new ideas. However, its activity is beyond control. On the other hand, the analytical mind’s process, though slow and limited, can be controlled. But it can also bend the results to fit expectations and lead to self-deception! What is therefore the relationship between the two minds? And how do they work best together? As far as problem solving is concerned, the intuitive mind generates the solutions that the analytical mind then verifies and channels into reality. Apparently, Einstein seems to have expressed the same idea: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

2. One mind invents, the other analyzes

The fact that we have two distinct minds, one that is rational, the other intuitive, is a well-known concept since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers11. This idea has traveled through the centuries, and was passed on by the major western thinkers like Saint Augustine and Kant. In the 1920s French mathematician Henri Poincaré, one of the earliest scholars to study creativity, pointed out that “it is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover”.

“It is by logic that we prove,
but by intuition that we discover”.

Henri Poincaré, mathematician

The 1970s view: two separate sides of the brain
The idea of the two minds became widely popular in the 1970s, when scientists believed that a flash of insight came from the right hemisphere of the brain, where creative, imaginative, and intuitive thoughts occur, and the left hemisphere of the brain handled logical, analytical, and rational thoughts. In 1981 Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize for his research on the two-sided brain. In his Nobel lecture, he noted the following:

The same individual can be observed to employ consistently one or the other of two distinct forms of mental approach and strategy, much like two different people, depending on whether the left or right hemisphere is in use.12

However, the idea Sperry and other scientists had at that time was very different from today’s. Scientists then not only believed that the two hemispheres worked independently, but that they would even hinder one another. For example, they believed that the left “logical” hemisphere inhibited the functioning of the right hemisphere, blocking its creativity13. This idea had some real and lasting repercussions on management practices. The very myth of brainstorming that assumes that the secret to producing innovation is to generate as many wild and uncensured ideas as possible,14 amply fed on the idea of two separate hemispheres.
The modern view: two integrated systems During the same years in which the two-hemispheres idea was increasingly gaining visibility in the mainstream, in neuroscience labs the evolution of brain scanners was quietly telling another story. Scientists discovered that there were indeed specialized areas of the brain – and hundreds of them, not just two – and that certainly did not correspond to the two hemispheres. These areas are distributed from back to front, top to bottom and left to right.15 The mind is much more complex and interconnected than Sperry had imagined. When we think, both creatively and analytically, bundles of neural connections light up and invest the whole of the brain, not just two separate hemispheres. In other words, the two minds work together, are constantly connected and exchange information.

The two minds are not separate mechanisms, but rather interact constantly with one another: intuitive mind generates ideas for analytical mind to reflect on and compute with. Thinking is the result of the constant and inextricable interconnection between our two minds.

As Lauri Järvilehto16 of Aalto University in Helsinki explains: “The two systems are not separate mechanisms, but rather interact constantly with one another. System 1 generates both inputs and explicit processes for System 2 to reflect on and compute with, and conversely, System 2 monitors and controls the suggestions of System 1 within the constraints of working memory capacity and volitional capacity.” Jarvileto concludes: “Instead of separating them, the two systems can be construed as a nested system” (see figure 2)

Figure 2. The nested system. The two minds are connected. The intuitive mind, as symbolized by the circle, represents the totality of our thinking. When we become aware of an idea and we start processing it analytically, that portion of thinking, represented by a point, corresponds to the analytical mind.

Conclusion

As far as management thinking is concerned, this means that thinking is neither purely analytical nor purely creative. As Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon has pointed out, effective managers do “not have the luxury of choosing between ‘analytical’ and ‘intuitive’ approaches to problems. Good management – indeed the art of management – involves an ‘intimate combination’ of intuitive sensing and analytical solving.”17 As Sadler-Smith reminds us “effective problem-solving and decision-making is a product of both analysis and intuition”. The tendency to rely too much on data and algorithm processing reflects more a need for reassurance than the way our mind works. It avoids exposure to criticism, but it’s also unhelpful in producing breakthrough innovation. To be successful in the face of a constantly changing world a new mindset must be developed: a holistic mindset in which the two minds – the analytical and the intuitive – come together to produce a new type of creative, profound and agile thinking. Sensing is the method that teaches you to master intuition and use it in synergy with the analytical mind to produce this new type of thinking.

1. Evans and Frankish (2009) The duality of mind: An historical perspective. In Evans, J., & Frankish, K. (Eds.). In Two Minds: Dual Processes and Beyond. Oxford University Press, pp. 1–29, p. 18.

2. Epstein, S. (2002). Cognitive-experiential self-theory of personality. In Handbook of Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology (pp. 159–184).

3. Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist, 54(7), 462–479.

4. Djiksterhuis, A. (2004). Think different: The merits of unconscious thought in preference development and decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(5), 586–598. See also Djiksterhuis, A., & Nordgren, L. F. (2006). A theory of unconscious thought. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 95–106.

5. The expressions ‘intuitive mind’ and ‘analytical mind’ come from Eugene Sadler-Smith (‘Inside Intuition’. Routledge 2010 and ‘The Intuitive Mind. Profiting from the Power of Your Sixth Sense’, Wiley, 2010). In turn, Sadler-Smith has changed it from Seymour Epstein, who refers to System 1 intuitive processing as ‘intuitive-experiential’ (Epstein, S. (2011) The influence of valence and intensity of effect on intuitive processing. In Sinclair, M. (Ed.). Handbook of Intuition Research. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 37–51, p. 37) and refers to System 2 analytical processing as ‘analyticalrational’ (Evans, J. S. B. (2007). On the resolution of conflict in dual process theories of reasoning. Thinking and Reasoning, 13: 321–339.; Hodgkinson, G. P., & Sadler-Smith, E. 2018. The dynamics of intuition and analysis in managerial and organizational decision making. Academy of Management Perspectives, 32(4): 473–492).

6. Frankish, K., & Evans, J. S. B. (2009) The duality of mind: An historical perspective. In Evans, J., & Frankish, K. (Eds.). In Two Minds: Dual Processes and Beyond. Oxford University Press, pp. 1–29, p. 14.

7. These figures are symbolic and their purpose is to provide an idea of the relative orders of magnitude. Zimmerman calculated the non-conscious information processing capacity to be 11.2 million bits per second, whilst for the conscious processing he calculated a figure of 40 bits. (Zimmermann, M. (1989). The nervous system in the context of information theory. In R. F. Schmidt & G. Thews (Eds.), Human physiology (pp. 166–173). Berlin: Springer). As regards to the conscious process Csikszentmihali argues that is possible to process at most 126 bits at second based on works by Simon (Simon, H. A. (1978).
Rationality as process and how as product of thought. The American Economic Review, 68(2), 1–16.) and Kahaneman (Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.). Djiksterhuis et al. calculated between 30-50 bits (Djiksterhuis, A., Aarts, H., & Smith, P. K. (2006). The power of the subliminal: On subliminal persuasion and other potential applications. Oxford University Press.). More recent calculations on the processing ability of the non-conscious mind have come up with an even greater number. See, for example, M. E. P. Seligman, P. Railton, R.F. Baumeister, C. Sripada. ‘Homo Prospectus’, Oxford University Press (2016).

8. Buschman, T. J., Siegel, M., Roy, J. E., & Miller, E. K. (2011). Neural substrates of cognitive capacity limitations. PNAS, 108(27).

9. Miller, G. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63, 81–97.

10. Dietrich, A. (2004). Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the experience of flow. Consciousness and Cognition, 13, 746–761.

11. Just think of the myth of the chariot described by Plato in Phaedrus. Here the soul is represented by a chariot drawn by two horses – one clever but unruly, the other hot-blooded – that sometimes pull in the same direction and at other times in opposite directions, and disciplined by the auriga who represents the rational mind.

12. Roger W. Sperry, “Nobel Lecture” (lecture, Stockholm Concert Hall, Stockholm, December 8, 1981).

13. J. E. Bogen & G. M. Bogen (1969). The other side of the brain III: The corpus callosum and creativity. Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Societies, 34, 141-203.

14. The inventor of brainstorming, American advertising executive Alex Osborn, researched the environment that his advertising team collaborated in and found that their creativity was most stimulated when certain rules were followed: 1. Generate as many ideas as possible; 2. Defer Judgment on all ideas; 3. Generate wild ideas; 4. Build upon each other’s ideas. (Alex Osborn, Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957).

15. For an accurate scientific description and a systematic review of the fields of application of intuition, see Eugene Sadler-Smith. Intuition in Business. Oxford University Press 2023. At the time of its publication the book outlined the state of the art of the science of intuition.

16. Järvilehto, Lauri. The Nature and Function of Intuitive Thought and Decision Making

17. Sadler Smith, 2023, page 36

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