There is a lot of self-talk that goes on within all of us. You know the kind of thing: “Stupid! Why did I have to mention the echidna?!” or “This shirt is really workin’ for me today! Smokin’!” Or, “Will I look like a pig if I eat that last biscotti? I really want it, though. Maybe if I create a distraction by setting the packets of sugar on fi re, I can grab it while everyone debates whether a latté will put out a sugar fire?”
While you may have not had those exact thoughts, you will have had others according to your own inner voice. Undoubtedly, your inner thoughts contribute to your outer decisions and behaviour, but they are not the entire story. There will also have been times when you have had a gut feeling or instinct about a situation that was beyond rational understanding. In a highly rational age, we tend to dismiss those gut instincts because they don’t fit a scientific model of sequential reasoning and understanding. However, the more we study gut feelings, the more we realise they contain valuable information and can lead to better decision-making.
Unconscious information
Did you know you have sensory organs that gather information? Your eyes, ears and taste buds all register what is happening in the world around you and send data to your brain, which synthesises that data and makes decisions. However, that is not the end of the data-gathering network that your brain has at its disposal.
Sensors in your muscles, organs and bones all send additional streams of data to a part of the brain called the insula. Signals such as breathing rate, heart rate and body temperature are all somatic markers that provide feedback to your brain. This accessing of unconscious information that occupies the fringes of your awareness is known as “interoception” and it forms a vital component of good decision-making. When you encounter a new situation, your brain is unconsciously scrolling through stored past experiences, looking for patterns that match your current experience. When a potentially relevant pattern is detected, it is your somatic markers that let your brain know, through changed breathing, altered heart rate or tensed muscles. This is all an unconscious process, but it translates into nameless feelings, your gut instinct.
On top of external stimulation and interoceptive data, your brain also accesses your current active thoughts. This treasure trove of data is integrated into a single snapshot of your condition at any given moment, and your brain sums it all up, making
decisions as to what a scenario means and what you need to do.
While the conscious parts of awareness are easy to value simply because you are aware of them, your unconscious, interoceptive gut feelings are less valued but equally as useful. In fact, a study published in the journal Cognition found that damage to a part of the prefrontal cortex in the brain can decouple the brain from interoceptive input, which does not reduce intellect but does impair the ability to learn from negative feedback. Your gut feelings, the interoceptive information that your body sends to your brain, are a vital part of how you navigate the world.
Your body knows
The stock market is by no means a warm and fuzzy place. Large sums of money are exchanged, and it is all based on rationality. Or is it? Research tells us that stock market traders are highly influenced by their gut feelings. One study from the journal Scientific Reports asked high-frequency male hedge fund traders to count their own heartbeats without touching their chest or pulse points. Compared to a control group of male university students, the stock market traders were much better at detecting and counting their own heartbeat. The traders with the most experience were even better than other traders, and ability to detect heart rate was directly correlated with how long they had been trading. The researchers made the point that gut feelings are important for stock market traders in making decisions and they will often go with what “feels right”, responding to their own internal interoceptive signals, even if they are not aware that they are doing so.
Research by Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has repeatedly shown that your body can work out patterns long before your brain does. If you can tap into that knowledge, then you can make better decisions, even when they are major life decisions.
Big decisions
Deciding to get married is a big call. Marriage can be a challenging business and should not be entered into lightly after sharing a couple of glasses of champagne and some tonsil hockey at your friend’s housewarming party. You do need to give some careful consci