This article is expaining a recent study that shows intuition, or unconscious reasoning— really does exist beyond a vague description, and that it is quantifiably measurable. Doesn' this just open up more possibilities towards understanding intelligence as a whole!  http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/minds-business/intuition-its-more-than-a-feeling.html

Intuition – It’s More Than a Feeling

Great leaders make smart decisions, even in difficult circumstances. From Albert Einstein to Oprah Winfrey, many top leaders ascribe their success to having followed their intuition. New research shows how going with our gut instincts can help guide us to faster, more accurate decisions.

Intuition — the idea that individuals can make successful decisions without deliberate analytical thought — has intrigued philosophers and scientists since at least the times of the ancient Greeks. But scientists have had trouble finding quantifiable evidence that intuition actually exists.

Now, a team of researchers from the University of New South Wales has come up with a novel technique demonstrating just how much unconscious intuition can inform — and even improve — our decision-making. The research team — psychological scientists Galang Lufityanto, Chris Donkin, and Joel Pearson — recently published their findings in Psychological Science.

“Many people use the phrase ‘intuition’ to describe a sensation or feeling they have when making decisions, but these are only descriptions, they don’t provide strong evidence that we can use unconscious information in our brain or body to guide our behavior,” Pearson explains. “This is the first time we have been able to show strong evidence that something like intuition does actually exist.”

To measure intuition, the researchers designed an experiment in which participants were exposed to emotional images outside conscious awareness as they attempted to make accurate decisions. The results of the study demonstrate that even when people were unaware of the images, they were still able to use information from the images to make more confident and accurate decisions.

“These data suggest that we can use unconscious information in our body or brain to help guide us through life, to enable better decisions, faster decisions, and be more confident in the decisions we make,” Pearson says.

In the experiment, groups of college students were shown stimuli composed of a cloud of many moving dots, which looked like the noisy “snow” you might see on an old TV. Participants had to report which general direction the cloud of dots was moving in, left or right.

“While our subjects were making these decisions, we presented one of their eyes with emotional photographs, then we utilize another technique called continuous flash suppression to render these emotional photographs invisible or unconscious,” Pearson explains. “So while the subjects were making these sensory decisions, they never knew they were being presented with these emotional photographs.”

Participants were fitted with a mirror stereoscope during the experiment, which allowed the continuous flash suppression to mask emotional images in the other eye.

The emotion-provoking photographs included both positive images, like adorable puppies, as well as disturbing negative images, such as a snake about to strike. The type of image, positive or negative, indicated which direction the cloud of dots was moving.

Across four different experiments, Pearson and colleagues found that people were able to make faster and more accurate decisions when they unconsciously viewed the emotional images. Essentially, people’s brains were able to process and utilize information from the images to improve their decisions.

“Another interesting finding in this study is that intuition improved over time, suggesting that the mechanisms of intuition can be improved with practice,” Pearson adds.

Additional evidence for intuition came from participants’ physiological data. In one experiment, the researchers measured participants’ skin conductance — an indicator of physiological arousal — as they made decisions about the swarm of dots. In an exciting finding, the researchers observed that skin conductance predicted behavioral intuition; that is, even when people weren’t aware of the images, their bodies showed a physiological reaction to the emotional content of the stimuli.

According to Pearson, the ability to quantitatively measure intuition could be a boon to many different fields, especially when it comes to workplace hiring: “This could be applied in the workplace, taking the place of existing questionnaires which really only test people’s opinions about their own feelings of intuition. We do have intuition and we can measure it scientifically.”

 

Reference

Lufityanto, G., Donkin, C., & Pearson, J. (2016). Measuring Intuition: Nonconscious Emotional Information Boosts Decision Accuracy and Confidence. Psychological Science. doi: 10.1177/0956797616629403

Published April 21, 2016

Enjoy! 

 

More than a few of us have found ourselves scratching our heads over creationist insistency of a literal Biblical interpretation. This 2014 study could explain why:

Personality Traits Help Explain Creationist Beliefs

By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer | January 3, 2014 03:14pm ET

 

A new study suggests that people who believe in creationism are more likely to prefer to take in information via their senses versus via intuition. In contrast, religious believers who see the Bible's creation story as symbolic tend to be more intuitive.

"Intuitives tend to be much more at home with symbolic things, generally," said Andrew Village, the head of the theology and religious studies program at York St. John University in the United Kingdom.

Personality and religion

Village, an Anglican priest, is also a former scientist — before he trained in the ministry, he studied the ecology of birds of prey. He applied that scientific sensibility in the new study, which surveyed 663 English churchgoers on their beliefs about Genesis, the book of the Bible that describes the Earth's creation. [The Top 10 Creation Stories]

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009 prompted great interest in beliefs about evolution and creationism, Village told LiveScience. Creationism is the belief that God created humans and animals in their current form, as described in Genesis. The most literal of these beliefs holds that God created the universe in six days.

Previous studies have suggested that personality influences whether people will become religious, and if they are religious, what tradition they will gravitate toward, Village said. He wanted to investigate how personality influenced beliefs about Genesis, specifically.

To do so, he included personality measurements in his survey, focusing on personality traits first proposed by psychologist Carl Jung in 1921 and made famous by the Myers-Briggs personality test. This test is meant to reveal people's preferences for collecting information and making decisions.

The Myers-Briggs breaks people into four dichotomies: extroversion versus introversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling and judging versus perception.

Extroverts prefer the company of others, whereas introverts like to be on their own. Those who fit into the "sensing" category like to gather information in concrete, tangible ways, whereas the intuitive rely on abstract feelings and hunches. "Thinkers" make decisions via logical, detached judgments, whereas "feelers" focus on empathy and consensus-building. 

Someone who is in the "judging" category prefers to use their thinking or feeling processes when interacting with the outside world, while someone in the "perceiving" category relies more on their sensing or intuition processes.

Biblical belief

Village's survey-takers were recruited in churches and thus were quite religious, with 93 percent reporting they attended church weeklyk and 90 percent saying they prayed daily. The survey of this group's creationist beliefs and personality traits revealed that the more people preferred "sensing" over intuitive information-gathering, the more likely they were to believe that Genesis should be interpreted literally. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

This finding makes sense, Village said. If someone believes the Bible is the word of God, and that the Bible is true, it follows logically that Genesis is true.

"When people think, 'Oh, creationists are unthinking people,' they're not," Village said. "They're just using a different system."

Intuitive people are more willing to speculate and less likely to take things at face value, Village reported Dec. 23 in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. More indirectly, "thinkers," or people who prefer logical decision-making, are more likely than feelers to believe in creationism, Village found. This was explained by the fact that thinkers tend to gravitate toward more conservative religious traditions, however.

It's important to note that the Myers-Briggs psychological preferences say nothing about IQ, Village said — so the study is agnostic on whose interpretation of the Bible is right or wrong.

"It's not our level of thinking and whether we're smart or not," he said. "It's just the way we make decisions, rather than our intelligence."

The findings may be useful to preachers looking for new ways to connect with their flocks, Village said. They also explain why people from different religious traditions often fail to understand one another, he said.

"In some ways a lot of the differences are about differences in personality and psychological preferences rather than the content" of beliefs, he said. "People who have a strong sense of, 'We must decide rationally and logically,' will go about their religion in a particular way, and people who decide more on their values will go about their religion in a particular way."

http://www.livescience.com/42314-personality-creationist-beliefs.html

Editor's note: This article was updated Jan. 7 to correct the Darwin-related celebration in 2009. It was the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, "On the Origin of Species." 

Enjoy! 

Of course intuition requires a stimulus. The problem is thinking that it is a supernatural stimulus and that it is always right.

Also, if someone believes the Bible is true and that logically Genesis is true but that does not mean they are any more or less intelligent because of it then that is wrong. First off, an intelligent person knows that just because he believes something that doesn't mean it's true. Second, there is how literal he takes Genesis.

Let's ask ourselves this: do we honestly believe that the people going to the Noah's Ark museum because they believe it's all true are more intelligent than the Christians who don't believe in a literal reading of Noah?

Anyway, thanks for the articles that back up what I've been saying all along.

LOL... Except they don't!

Please substantiate that claim,

Anyway, thanks for the articles that back up what I've been saying all along.

while I make dinner. There is not one thought as a thread carrying throughout these varied studies! I hoped you had more finesse to see it.

🍳😎🙋🏼

For starters, this is exactly what you have not been saying!

 The study's results challenge longstanding assumptions about the science-faith interface. While it is commonly assumed that most scientists are atheists, the global perspective resulting from the study shows that this is simply not the case. "

Let's be clear, this is what you felt necessary to be re-iterated from the other thread:

... it doesn't change the fact that as a whole atheists are smarter than believers. It doesn't change the fact that scientists are more likely to be atheists than non-scientists.

Clearly there is something ... dissonate happening with your interpretation. And please note, this study is not even a year old! No wiggling away with deflection of a grammar and discussion of what time or tense you want to discuss. You won't find anything more current than this.

You claim the universe started with a God 6000 years ago but you ignore the fact that the universe is billions of years old and dinosaurs lived before humans. Plus, it has been proven by DNA that the first people came out of Africa and not the middle east. So, your religion also started with belief, right, a fairy tale, right?

There are religions that predate Christianity that tell a similar but different story. Some with strange virgin births. Weird how Christianity copied those previous religions but claims to be the first religion because God created it all 6000 years ago.

What is your evidence because you can't claim I started with a belief and show no evidence beyond a man written bible that has been changed so many times over the centuries that no one is sure what is right and what is wrong. Where is your hard evidence since you want me to show evidence of exactly how we came to be. You have no proof except stories fairy tales.

 

Here is my thoughts about GSDADMIN; in an atheistic worldview, when you die that’s it (or as GSDADMIN beliefs, “When you die you’re done”). There is no ultimate basis for morality, for life, or even for logic. And although GSDADMIN  falsely claims that he arrived at his belief in atheism (and life by natural processes) based on the evidence, why should he trust his senses anyway? What gives him the basis for accepting what he perceives as reality? What makes his interpretation of the evidence right and a creation scientist’s wrong?

 

Listen, I don't care what you believe - but you and your buddy came here and told us we are going to hell if we don't get saved. Well I don't want to be saved but I will be damned if I will live in hell. So, go to hell with your hell. I will live my life as I see fit and I will be morally and spiritually just fine. Maybe those who follow so blindly in your occult are actually the ones going to hell. But we don't know that as all you have are stories. Ever played the game in school were a story is started and as it goes around the classroom it gets changed. Well imagine how a story over centuries or millennia gets changed and that is your fairy tale Shtal, that is all you got.

BTW, I edited my post as I was at work and didn't proof read what I wrote and once I did - wow so I edited to clear up my mumbo jumbo and add more thoughts.

 

Ultimately,  what difference should it make if one set of chemicals wrapped in a blanket of skin believes something different from another? In GSDADMIN worldview, our brains are just doing what the chemicals and electric impulses in them direct us to. GSDADMIN can’t even fall back on the relative morality of “what society decides goes” argument: at the last census (2011) only 22.3% claimed “no religion” as their option on the form. They also have to at least recognize that many of the religious organizations their strategy may impact are those that, even in an atheistic worldview, do good work. Homeless shelters, Christian-based hospitals, Red Cross centers, charities, and church food pantries all might be negatively impacted. So what does this show about their and/or GSDAdmin  morality? It’s relatively worthless! And really what does it all matter in an ultimately fatalistic worldview?

 

But Christians know what we believe, have a firm foundation for that belief, and most importantly, have a sure hope for the future. As 1 Corinthians 15:22 states: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” And that future is secure:

Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life (Romans 5:5–10).
But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Sorry, what twisted logic leads you to believe, Shtal - or whoever you cribbed this bit from - that it is important that no-one would choose to die for a 'righteous man', and only 'perhaps' would anyone die for a 'good man', but Jesus was "demonstrating god's will" and automatically better because he died for the sinners ? There are so many examples in history of martyrs (religious and otherwise) giving their own lives to save other people; and usually NOT distinguishing whether those saved by their actions were 'good', 'righteous', 'sinners' or indifferent. For my money, those who save anybody else by their own death, especially on an 'ask no questions' basis, perform a far more useful function to society as a whole than would anyone who 'saved' ONLY the nasty-minded, or grasping, or murderers, thieves & vagabonds!

I love that you keep calling me an atheist when I have posted over and over I am not an atheist. But instead of listening, you keep writing I am an atheist. You are labeling me unfairly and you need to stop. I don't call you a Muslim but maybe I should as there really isn't that much difference between the religions. BTW, how is Hamm's ark doing? I hear it is not doing well and the taxpayers of Kentucky are on the hook for millions.

LOL @ hundmutter

Maybe this video will bring some memory back!!

What's even more pertinent is Shtal's refusal to accept that Atheism is the LACK of belief. But then...