Anton Kimfors

Anton Kimfors

Welcome to my blog, where I share my work, thoughts, and projects.

Is it irrational to trust your gut?

by | Jun 22, 2020 | Life, Work

Being rational is to act based on logic, while trusting your gut is to act based on intuition, no matter if it is logical or not. In other words, trusting your gut is what most people would call being irrational.

But, if you have heard about this study from Iowa College, you know that in some situations, it is much more efficient to trust your gut than to base your decisions on logic. In this study, the subjects were asked to pick cards from 4 different decks. The decks had been put together so that 2 of the decks would be the better choice 60% of the time, but the subjects were, of course, not informed about this. The result was that the subjects started to, intuitively, take more and more cards from the winner decks, long before they with logic could describe why.

So, if you know this, wouldn’t it be very irrational not to trust your gut in similar situations?