Business Decisions: Go With Your Gut

What we call ‘gut feeling’ could well be shorthand for experience, meaning that ignoring it in business could prove unwise.

How should you make a decision? Carefully weighing the pros and cons will probably be the way to go when something’s at stake, but there’s another factor that shouldn’t be dismissed: the gut feeling.

Listening to your gut isn’t something we should do only when the facts of the matter could take you either way. Science has actually proven that gut feeling is a physical reaction that can tell you more about a situation than your brain can – even in business. This is because what we call “gut feeling” can also be referred to by the far more fancy-sounding name of “somatic markers”.

Gut feeling is a science!

In a study, Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, found it beneficial for people to pay attention to these somatic markers. They start in the amygdala, the part of our brain dealing with threat responses, and in the insula, the part responsible for feelings like pride or guilt. Working together, these parts of the brain can tell us when something’s right or not a long time before we’re consciously aware of what’s going on.

Damasio tested the theory by offering people the chance to win money using four decks of cards – two which were stacked to yield bad results, and the other two being stacked favourably. It took people about 50 cards to start drifting towards the better decks of cards, as their bodies had long ago started showing physical stress symptoms around the bad decks. But it wasn’t until the people reached 80 cards that they could put words to what was happening, and explain exactly why they were making that choice. The conclusion: their gut feeling knew what was best before their brains did.

So how do you use your gut feeling to get ahead in business?

The first step is understanding that gut feeling can actually be shorthand for experience. This will often be the case if dealing with a dilemma at work: something feels right because your brain is drawing on lots of different things that have happened over the years. “Intuition is real; it comes from memory. The brain is always searching for things you’ve known or experienced that are similar to what you’re experiencing now. When it identifies one, it gives you that feeling of intuition or deja vu,” William Duggan, author of ‘Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement’, told ‘FastCompany‘.

The second step is realising that sometimes this “experience” isn’t necessarily to be trusted. One of the data points for the brain could be a plotline for a film, for example. Alternatively you may prefer one work candidate over another because they remind you of a friend. “It’s similar to a 16-year-old telling you something,” says Duggan. “Should you listen? Yes. Should you do what the 16-year-old says? Maybe or maybe not.”.

The third step is to work out if the gut feeling is rooted in fear. Is your reluctance to take a chance based on solid reasons backed by intuition, or is it just reluctance to embrace change? While some of us have a mindset priming us towards taking chances, others are programmed to be risk averse. Studies by Ulrike Malmendier at University of California and Stefan Nagel at Stanford University found that people who grew up during the Depression were unusually risk-averse in their investments throughout their lives, regardless of the conditions later. This suggests initial experiences are very formative, to a point where childhood memories could be influencing our adult decisions. This is why it’s important to consider whether the gut feeling is just an excuse for not veering out of the comfort zone, or if it’s a sign that something is actually wrong.

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