Deliberative analysis enables us to weigh features, simulate futures, and arrive at good, tractable decisions. So why do we so often eschew deliberation, and instead rely on more intuitive, gut ...responses? We propose that intuition might be prescribed for some decisions because people's folk theory of decision-making accords a special role to authenticity, which is associated with intuitive choice. Five pre-registered experiments find evidence in favor of this claim. In Experiment 1 (N = 654), we show that participants prescribe intuition and deliberation as a basis for decisions differentially across domains, and that these prescriptions predict reported choice. In Experiment 2 (N = 555), we find that choosing intuitively vs. deliberately leads to different inferences concerning the decision-maker's commitment and authenticity—with only inferences about the decision-maker's authenticity showing variation across domains that matches that observed for the prescription of intuition in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3 (N = 631), we replicate our prior results and rule out plausible confounds. Finally, in Experiment 4 (N = 177) and Experiment 5 (N = 526), we find that an experimental manipulation of the importance of authenticity affects the prescribed role for intuition as well as the endorsement of expert human or algorithmic advice. These effects hold beyond previously recognized influences on intuitive vs. deliberative choice, such as computational costs, presumed reliability, objectivity, complexity, and expertise.
•Participants ascribed slightly higher but similar levels of freedom, free will, and control for arbitrary compared to easy deliberate decisions.•Participants ascribed greater freedom, free will, and ...control for easy decisions compared to difficult deliberate decisions.•Participants ascribed high levels of freedom, free will, and control while denying the ability to do otherwise in easy deliberate decisions.•Whether decisions were highly consequential or mundane had little impact on participants’ intuitions about freedom, free will, control, and the ability to do otherwise.
Philosophical accounts of free will frequently appeal to deliberate, consequential, and purposeful decisions. However, some recent studies have found that laypeople attribute more freedom to arbitrary than to deliberate decisions. We hypothesized that these differences stem from diverging intuitions about concepts surrounding free will—especially freedom, being in control, and the ability to decide otherwise. In two studies, we found that laypeople attributed high levels of free will, freedom, and control to both arbitrary and deliberate decisions. However, subjects surprisingly attributed reduced ability to decide otherwise when faced with an “easy” decision with one clearly superior option. Furthermore, laypeople attributed greater free will, freedom, and control to “easy” than “hard” decisions with no clearly superior option. Our results suggest that laypeople have diverging intuitions about these different, free-will-related concepts. Therefore, a scientific account of free will may require integrating results from studies on different types of decision-making.
Is moral judgment accomplished by intuition or conscious reasoning? An answer demands a detailed account of the moral principles in question. We investigated three principles that guide moral ...judgments: (a) Harm caused by action is worse than harm caused by omission, (b) harm intended as the means to a goal is worse than harm foreseen as the side effect of a goal, and (c) harm involving physical contact with the victim is worse than harm involving no physical contact. Asking whether these principles are invoked to explain moral judgments, we found that subjects generally appealed to the first and third principles in their justifications, but not to the second. This finding has significance for methods and theories of moral psychology: The moral principles used in judgment must be directly compared with those articulated in justification, and doing so shows that some moral principles are available to conscious reasoning whereas others are not.
Do people intuitively favour certain actions over others? In some dual-process research, reaction-time (RT) data have been used to infer that certain choices are intuitive. However, the use of ...behavioural or biological measures to infer mental function, popularly known as 'reverse inference', is problematic because it does not take into account other sources of variability in the data, such as discriminability of the choice options. Here we use two example data sets obtained from value-based choice experiments to demonstrate that, after controlling for discriminability (that is, strength-of-preference), there is no evidence that one type of choice is systematically faster than the other. Moreover, using specific variations of a prominent value-based choice experiment, we are able to predictably replicate, eliminate or reverse previously reported correlations between RT and selfishness. Thus, our findings shed crucial light on the use of RT in inferring mental processes and strongly caution against using RT differences as evidence favouring dual-process accounts.
Moral Intuition Weaver, Gary R.; Reynolds, Scott J.; Brown, Michael E.
Journal of management,
01/2014, Volume:
40, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In contrast to older, conventional accounts that treat ethical decision making and behavior as the result of deliberative and intendedly rational processes, a rapidly growing body of social science ...research has framed ethical thought and behavior as driven by intuition. We review this important new body of knowledge in terms of both the process and content of moral intuition. Then, to demonstrate its value to organizational scholars, we consider the potential impact of moral intuition research in four areas of organizational studies especially suited to insights from this research: leadership, organizational corruption, ethics training and education, and divestiture socialization. Our review and discussion suggest that the literature on moral intuition is incredibly rich, fruitful, and meaningful to a wide range of audiences.
In the last two decades, the theme of intuition has increasingly attracted the attention of academics, including psychologists. The increasing interest of psychologists in intuition is because the ...process of judgment and decision-making within individuals often occurs outside of their conscious thinking. This happens when individuals face uncertain situations, time pressure, and complex, ambiguous, and even strange problems. Intuition is the capacity of the human soul to know or understand a matter automatically, effortless, and affectively without rational processes. Intuition in psychological studies is based on experiences and knowledge accumulated from the past and stored in memory. In contrast to the Islamic perspective, intuition (divine) is based on the experience of spiritual disclosure coming from divine gifts. This study uses a psychological approach with descriptive comparative analysis techniques to discuss intuition, its mechanisms and development, originating from two perspectives: Islam and contemporary psychology. This study constructs five types of intuition where spiritual intuition occupies the highest position, followed by moral, creative, expertise, and social intuition.
Worldwide, obesity is a growing concern. The implicit belief that healthiness and tastiness in food are inversely related (the Unhealthy = Tasty Intuition or UTI) decreases healthy food consumption ...and increases the risk of obesity. Since also childhood obesity has increased at an alarming rate and a large component of adult obesity is established during childhood, questions about children's own food beliefs and preferences are important. However, methods currently used to assess the UTI are either unvalidated Likert scales or implicit measures that are time intensive and too complex to be used for children. Two studies presented here offer an alternative measurement - the simple visual analogue scale. The findings show that this measure is more effective in predicting dietary quality in adults and the frequency of healthy food consumption in children compared to more traditional measures. This simple and effective tool could be used by academics and health practitioners alike to better understand children's food beliefs at an early age, which is a critical step when addressing the increasing obesity problem.
Our study challenges the notion that intuition is used to explain away gender biases in access to finance, arguing instead that women's success in crowdfunding is rooted in the use of intuition. We ...measured investors' intuition using self-reports and fast investment decision-making related to crowdfunding campaigns in three randomized controlled experiments involving 2,911 subjects from Europe and the United States. Our Bayesian analysis provides evidence for a gender equality effect, suggesting that intuition cannot be cited as the reason for gender biases in investment decisions. Our research highlights the importance of reassessing the scientific reputation of intuition.
Through a review of the literature covering the use of intuition for decision making, this article isolates the important intuition determining variables and relates them to recent quantitative ...intuition research. As most farm decisions are made through intuition farmers, consultants, researchers and students of farm management will find the review valuable when thinking about managerial ability. The literature reviewed is taken from both urban and rural business studies as urban based studies dominate. The search covered all journals and articles in recent decades. The summary, and the quoted quantitative research, consider the variables which can be targeted in improving intuitive skill and provides a basis for thinking about intuition and its improvement within the farming world. It is concluded the most important skill to concentrate on is improving a farmer’s self-criticism through using a decision diary in conjunction with reflection and consultation leading to improved decision understanding. But many other variables are also important and contribute.
Is cheating intuitive when it serves self-interest? The literature on intuitive honesty versus dishonesty remains controversial. In two studies, we used both between-subjects (Study 1, N = 90) and ...within-subjects (Study 2, N = 93) cognitive load manipulations to induce intuition and tested the intuitive dishonesty hypothesis with behavioral cheating paradigms. Results showed that cognitive load increased lying across multiple tasks (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, the intuitive dishonesty effect occurred only for individuals low in Honesty-Humility (Study 2). The findings are discussed with regard to current debates about intuitive dishonesty.
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