Do You Go With Your Gut?
When you make a big, a crucial decision—about what therapy is best for your autistic child, about whether or not you should uproot your family to move to a school district that (you hear) offers good autism services, about whether you should hire a therapist who you just don’t feel “right” about—do you go with your gut, even after factoring in scientific evidence and research and trying to think objectively?
Here’s what Gerd Gigerenzer, a German social psychologist and the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, has to say about gut thinking in the August 28th New York Times:
It’s a judgment that is fast. It comes quickly into a person’s consciousness. The person doesn’t know why they have this feeling. Yet, this is strong enough to make an individual act on it. What a gut instinct is not is a calculation. You do not fully know where it comes from.
My research indicates that gut feelings are based on simple rules of thumb, what we psychologists term “heuristics.” These take advantage of certain capacities of the brain that have come down to us through time, experience and evolution. Gut instincts often rely on simple cues in the environment. In most situations, when people use their instincts, they are heeding these cues and ignoring other unnecessary information.
So again: Do you go with your heart or head, your gut or your brain?
Photo courtesy of YamTree via Flickr.
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POSTED IN: Neuroscience, Parenting, Psychology
19 opinions for Do You Go With Your Gut?
George Wade
Aug 28, 2007 at 9:46 am
As the origin of much of autism is in dysregulated metabolism and inflammation in the GUT! One might give gut feelings their due weight: without being blinded to other factors.
I don’t believe many of us in western society know how to do that…
John
Aug 28, 2007 at 9:48 am
I’d go with my nose. If something doesn’t smell right, it’s not for me. If it really stinks, I’ll tell others to look out.
Leanne
Aug 28, 2007 at 9:58 am
I think my best decision are a result of both my heart (or gut) and my head being synchronistic.
vincent
Aug 28, 2007 at 10:56 am
Candidly, in many instances my wife and I must go with our pocket.
Gut and heart play essential roles, but certain financial supports and many times sacrfices are critical.
livsparents
Aug 28, 2007 at 11:57 am
Forgive me, but my gut doesn’t think (except maybe when passing a bakery). I’ll agree with the German psychologist. My gut instincts are just my brain processing information with emotion included…
VAB
Aug 28, 2007 at 11:57 am
It can be both. In picking MK’s most recent SLP, we had made a gut level decision to go with the first one and we had also made a gut decision that we didn’t like the second one. But when the second one explained the theory and methodology of what she wanted to do, she completely convinced us. It was a good thing, too, as she has been by far and away the most effective SLP we have ever had.
HeatherS
Aug 28, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I tend to go with my gut a lot. But I also tend to over analyze things. I think that once-upon-a-time I realized that over-analysis was a problem for me and I just sort of decided that I should listen to my “gut” more often. It has worked on a fair number of occasions, but it has failed me once or twice as well.
An example of gut vs. brain: Poker. I tend to follow my instinct, and my husband crunches numbers. We almost always arrive at the same conclusion (to call, raise, or fold), but I generally get there sooner. I have long thought that there is a part of my brain that I do not have sufficient access privileges to that makes a handful of calculations that lead me in that direction.
On more important things, like my son and his educational an emotional needs, I think a healthy balance is important, because I just can’t completely trust the part of my brain that I’m not allowed to access to get it right every time.
hj
Aug 28, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Well, we always have George to remind how how insipid we all are ….
Suzanne
Aug 28, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I go with my gut. It’s all I can trust. so George, I wager to say I give my gut it’s due weight (and it gives me mine):P
George Wade
Aug 28, 2007 at 2:30 pm
I don’t think you are all insipid: Charlie Chew tackling the ocean; everybody with powerful opinions; blogs…
Aspies just speak up from the safety of a keyboard :-!
laurentius-rex
Aug 28, 2007 at 2:35 pm
George Wade you really are an A1 idiot aren’t you? delusion is what you need to be cured of,
You know nothing of the literature nothing of the science (faulty though it may be) and nothing whatever about the gut or the brain or for that matter your backside which you are talking out of.
Are you sure you are not an alter of John Best?
laurentius-rex
Aug 28, 2007 at 2:41 pm
My gut instinct tells me the appropriatly named Gerd is attempting to fly by the seat of his pants when his flies are undone.
We don’t know where it comes from but we know where his gut instinct goes, down the pan!
George Wade
Aug 28, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Thanks for reminding me how bad mannered Brits have become, King Laurie. Is that genetic, too?
Bink
Aug 28, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Oh please Larry and Suzanne. “George Wade” has ANTI AGING SUPPLEMENTS for sale on his site that will surely help you overcome your fuzzy thinking. “George Wade” is so very brave, and just wants to help you sorry people!
Kristina Chew, PhD
Aug 28, 2007 at 11:00 pm
I guess for me it is gut, mind, gut.
KimJ
Aug 29, 2007 at 11:34 am
I think the “gut instinct” is really a subspecies of the subconscious, which is indeed informed and educated. “Gut instinct” may be all logic or all emotion, depends on the circumstances. Every successful thing we have done for our son out of “gut instinct” matches other success stories. (no drugs, no brand name therapies, no daycare, a lot of encouragement, etc)
Really, there is so much information out there about autism, that one couldn’t make a conscious choice and feel comfortable about it. You have to “go with your gut”.
George Wade
Aug 29, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Kim,
Many educated people in Asia can make a conscious choice about autism treatment, once they get sufficient evidence: because they do not use too much critical logic. They do try ideas practically and responsibly.
Here is an example: http://www.autism.com/danwebcast/index.htm —> Psychiatrist from India interviewed by Dr. Rimland
Dr Rimland is a good interviewer: you only hear him once or twice, the rest is the Indian Psychiatrist. Hope that you like it.
Patrick
Aug 30, 2007 at 4:59 pm
A typical disclaimer for woo/quack product sites is found along with thet cleanse tea and anti aging stuff Bink!
* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
George Wade
Aug 31, 2007 at 4:48 am
The statements that go along with PharmaQuack stuff are just as enlightening. So the question becomes: what helps achieve health?
Does reading legal statements help us become healthy ?
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