Call it a gut feeling

Something just doesn’t feel right … There’s something off about him … I knew it, I just knew it … I’ve got a good feeling about this … Trust me, I’ve got a hunch …Have you ever experienced any of these scenarios? Where you can’t seem to make logical sense of it but you just know something. Whether it’s that there’s something fishy about your new colleague or that the house you’ve just gone to an inspection for is the one. You can feel it in your gut.Well … it’s not just in your head; it really is in your gut!The gut has often been described as the ‘second brain’ and for good reason; it actually contains its own nervous system called the enteric nervous system. This nervous system can operate with or independently of the brain and spinal cord and contains millions of neurons including serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine as well as small brain proteins called neuropeptides.Scientists conducted an experiment where participants were required to play a card game in which they were presented with four decks of cards. Some cards were penalty cards and some were worth money, the aim of the game was to maximise your winnings and minimise your losses. What the participants didn’t know was that two decks were rigged to provide big winnings followed by big losses and the other two to provide small gains but almost no losses. It took 50 cards before participants said they had a hunch about which cards to choose and 80 before they could explain it.What was most interesting however was that after only 10 risky cards sweat glands on subject’s palms opened slightly whenever they reached for a card in the ‘bad’ deck. It seems that before the brain could make sense of what was going on, the participants’ intuition (or their ‘gut feeling’) had already interpreted danger and was attempting to guide them toward the safer option.So while a gut feeling may seem almost magical or like some sort of sign from the universe about the unforeseeable future it is almost always based on some sort of truth in your environment … your brain just hasn’t quite caught up yet. The brain is constantly taking in countless bits of information and can only process a select few. It seems then as if these bits of information are summarised and sent to the enteric nervous system which then produces an emotional response which we feel in our gut (hence the uneasiness, butterflies or sinking feeling you might get). The problem is while we as humans are usually pretty good at recognising our intuition we are not as great at listening to it.Imagine you are waiting for an elevator and when it arrives there is a man inside that you immediately get a bad feeling from. What would you do? A lot of people in this situation would actually get in the elevator with the man, but why? While an animal might sense fear and immediately fight or flee from the situation, humans are a little more complex. Often times we find ourselves governed by social norms or expectations, political correctness, over thinking and doubt. While that churning feeling in your gut may be trying to tell you not to get in the elevator that little voice in your head might instead be saying ‘you’re just over thinking it, don’t be that suspicious overly paranoid person, nothing is going to happen’. In other words our mind is overriding our intuition.So should you always listen to your gut? While our gut is not some all-powerful entity that is infallible and incapable of error … it is a lot smarter than we give it credit for. Studies have found that large purchases (e.g. house or car) were viewed more favourably when the decision was made on a gut feeling rather than attentive deliberation. A lot of the time our gut feeing represents the most educated decision we can make based on our personal experiences, environment and knowledge. So next time you experience that weird uneasy feeling, or an overwhelming giddiness and butterflies it may be useful to sit with it for a while and bring your attention to the stimuli in your environment. It is very likely that your gut has noticed something before even you have.