Modern scientific, technological, and business problems are so complex that they can only be solved by rational analysis. Rationality helped us live better lives by enabling us to analyze the details of our environment and figure out complex cause-and-effect relationships. While intuition worked fine in helping us negotiate our social lives, the birth of language, tools, and technology added another layer- rationality. However, life kept on becoming more and more complex. Our intuition works great for dealing with people because that’s what it’s designed to be good at. We categorize people into friends and enemies. Today, most of these social skills come intuitively to us. You need to differentiate friends from foes, ingroups from outgroups, and helpers from cheaters. When you’re living in a group, you not only need to tone down your selfishness, you also need to be good socially. Intuition likely evolved to help humans live successfully in groups. Humans needed to keep track of their experiences with others. Something else was needed that could counterbalance instinct. Over time, when humans started living in groups, they needed to tone down their selfish instincts. Before early humans lived in groups, they must have relied more on their instincts just as many animals do today. Instincts are designed to promote survival and reproductive success in the present moment. Just like the bottom layer of soil is typically the oldest, instincts are our oldest psychological mechanisms. Think of the mind as having three layers. When you get good or bad vibes from people, it’s often the result of their facial expressions and body language gestures that you process quickly at the subconscious level. Doing body language gestures is instinctual behavior while reading them is mostly intuitive. The best example of instinct and intuition coming together is body language. Having a gut feeling about a new project.
While someone skilled is often said to behave instinctively, what we really mean by that is they’ve practiced so much that their response appears as if it were instinctive.įor example, soldiers go through intense training so that many of their responses may become automatic or ‘instinctive’. Instinct is not the same as skill or habit. Still, it always pushes you into an action that can promote survival and reproductive success.įor example, feeling attracted (response) to someone is an instinct that pushes you to pursue them so you can eventually mate with them (action). Note that while instinct is mostly behavioral, it can also be a purely psychological response. They’re strong and automatic behaviors designed to promote survival and reproductive success. None of these behaviors require thinking on your part. Parental protective and caring instincts.Recoiling hand on touching a hot object.Instincts are our oldest psychological mechanisms controlled by the most ancient parts of our brain. Our instinctive behaviors are triggered in response to some environmental stimuli. But they differ in important ways.Īn instinct is an innate behavioral tendency shaped by evolution to promote survival and reproductive success, mostly, in the present moment. In fact, many use these terms interchangeably. Intuition and instinct may seem like the same concepts.
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