By Shannon O'Sullivan
Intuition: that indescribable gut sensation that makes
itself hard to ignore, yet provides little to no reasoning as to why one should
listen to what its demands. What exactly is intuition--which no matter how irrational
it may seem—still factors into everyday decision making? In Intuitively Detecting What is Hidden within
a Visual Mask: Familiar-novel Discrimination and Threat Detection for
Unidentified Stimuli by Anne M. Cleary, Anthony J. Ryals, and Jason S. Nomi,
the researchers hypothesize that intuition is an adaptive memory process reflecting
our ancestors’ need for snap decision-making in life-or-death situations.
According to their theory, intuition uses previous knowledge to drive decisions
without actually consciously accessing that knowledge. The ability for intuition
to allow for such fast decisions with little circumstantial knowledge supports
the theory its evolutionary-based origins, for the few seconds it could save in
time spent decision-making could save an animal’s life.
In Intuitively
Detecting What is Hidden within a Visual Mask: Familiar-novel Discrimination
and Threat Detection for Unidentified Stimuli, the researchers attempted to
create a laboratory version of intuition through recognition without
identification (RWI): a phenomenon in which participants in a laboratory
setting can identify previously studied stimuli as more familiar than not-previously
studied stimuli. While prior studies had shown the connection between existing
knowledge and intuition using RWI, the researchers in this study strived to create
RWIs with more realistic discrimination tests by having participants determine
the previously known from the novel stimuli, rather than determining previously
studied from not previously studied stimuli. For every experiment, the
researchers obscured all the images used with a filter mask in order to make
the pictures consciously unidentifiable. In their first experiment, the researchers
had participants discriminate between famous and not famous faces; in the
second experiment, the researchers replaced famous and not famous people with
famous and not famous scenes; finally, the third experiment had participants
discriminate between threatening images and nonthreatening images, with the
consideration of whether threatening stimuli were animate (living) or inanimate
(nonliving) taken into account.
The reason that whether the threatening stimuli given
the higher familiarity ratings was animate and inanimate is important stimuli
because of recent research indicating that animate threats required less
perceptual information to detect, as opposed to inanimate threats. Also, recent
research has indicated that animate objects are easier to remember than
inanimate objects. The importance in these difference between animate and inanimate
threats lies in the evolutionary-based need for increased awareness of living
threats over nonliving threats, such as predators. If the third experiment resulted
in more recognitions without identifications (RWIs) of animate threats as opposed
to inanimate threats, the results would support the researcher’s hypothesis on
the evolutionary basis of intuition.
The results indicated that even without conscious
identification, famous pictures (both of people and scenes) received higher
familiarity ratings than unfamiliar pictures. In addition, pictures of animate
threats also received higher familiarity ratings, as opposed to both inanimate
threats and animate non-threats. The latter finding is the study’s most
substantial evidence to support the researcher’s theory of an adaptive memory
process behind intuition, due to the evolutionary-based need to maintain a
greater awareness of living threats rather than nonliving threats.
The implications found in Intuitively Detecting What is Hidden within a Visual Mask:
Familiar-novel Discrimination and Threat Detection for Unidentified Stimuli regarding
the expansion of RWI results to more realistic situations can help future
research determine the process of intuitive decision-making in real-world contexts.
For example, the third experiment—in which animate threats received more
familiarity ratings than inanimate threats or animate non-threats-- may help
explain the conclusions drawn by another study on intuition: Fight Fire With Fire: The Effect of
Perceived Anger on Punitive Intuitions by Carolyn Côté-Lussier. In this
study, Côté-Lussier hypothesized that perceiving anger in others leads to
faster, harsher punishments for crimes based off of punitive intuitions. The
study consisted of participants rapidly deciding whether or not to give a
prison sentence to a convicted criminal based off of criminal’s mug shot. The
results indicated that the perception of a criminal’s anger predicted a rapid
and harsh punitive punishment for the criminal, with high levels of anger even
negating the strong biases for Black criminals to receive harsher punishments
than non-Black criminals.
In a sense, the judicial system is a highly developed
manifestation of the way humans and other predators have taken care of threats
since the beginning. In both methods of defense against a threat, punishments
for infractions are made to fit the crime; the bigger the threat, the greater
the likelihood of a harsher punishment in order to ensure the continued safety
of an individual or society. As an animal sees a cheetah as a greater threat
than a tomcat, individuals such as the participants in Fight Fire With Fire: The Effect of Perceived Anger on Punitive
Intuitions see criminals with angry expressions as a greater threat than
criminals with sad expressions, and hence in need of a harsher punishment.
The harsh punitive intuition participants used upon the
perceivably angry criminals over the non-angry criminals supports Cleary,
Ryals, and Nomi’s hypothesis that intuition reflects an evolutionary memory
process that allows us to make rapid decisions with scarce information for the
means of survival. Possible explanations given for why perceivably angry
criminals received rapid harsh punitive responses comes from “mirror neurons”,
which are neuronal substrates that hypothetically allow us to learn through
imitation of others; when looking at the role of “mirror neurons” through an
evolutionary survival standpoint, it seems that through identifying anger in
others by imitating them, one can conclude through our own experiences feeling
anger that when another person feels angry, defensive action becomes necessary.
Through recognizing how the basis of intuitive punitive
decision-making may result from underlying evolutionary survival techniques to
recognize living threats, it becomes easier to understand why nature may overcome
reasoning when making emotional decisions. While the underlying mechanism of
intuition still plays a beneficial role in human decision making, it can also
hinder progress towards rational, justified thought processes. If a criminal is
already on trial for a crime, determining his or her punishment no longer
necessitates intuitive judgment because the criminal is no longer an immediate threat
to society. Hence, the results both Intuitively
Detecting What is Hidden within a Visual Mask: Familiar-novel Discrimination
and Threat Detection for Unidentified Stimuli and Fight Fire With Fire: The Effect of Perceived Anger on Punitive
Intuitions remain not only interesting, but also give awareness to
precautions we as a society must take in order to prevent evolutionary biases
from conflicting with what our human rationale has to offer the world.
References
Cleary, A. M., Ryals, A. J., & Nomi, J. S., (2013). Intuitively
detecting what is hidden within a visual mask:
familiar-novel
discrimination and threat detection for unidentified stimuli. Memory Cognition
41,
989-999. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-013-0319-4
Côté-Lussier, C., (2013). Fight fire with fire: the effect of perceived anger
on punitive intuitions. Emotion,
13(6),
999-1003. DOI: 10.1037/a0034308
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