Your Second Brain

Have you ever heard people telling you to use your gut instinct?

Do you know that it is the most effective way to make a decision?

Embrace your second brain.

We think of intelligence as a deliberate, conscious activity based on the law of logic. However, much of our mental life is unconscious, based on processes alien to logic: gut feelings or intuition. We have intuition about friends, who we should hang with, sports, which detergent to buy, and so on. But can following your gut feelings lead to the best decision?

Research have proven gut feelings to be the best tools for making decision.
I know, it seems naive and silly to think so, but take a look at where it comes from.

Picture from Chapter 6. Limbic System, Amygdala. (Wright, 2015)

The unconscious mind comes form the amygdala, pointed in the red section of the brain picture.




In the brain, amygdala is a part of the limbic system, the place where communication between reasonings and feelings takes place.

Everything you see, smell, hear, taste and touch travels through your body in the form of electric signals. These signals pass from cell to cell until they reach their ultimate destination, your brain. They enter your brain at the base near spinal cord and must travel to your frontal lobe (behind your forehead) before you can think rationally about your experience. But first they travel through the limbic system, the place where you get your "gut reactions", those subjective feelings, about what is good and what is bad. (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009)

                Picture from the book of Emotional Intelligence 2.0. (Bradberry & Greaves, 2009)

Because the electric signal reach the limbic system before it reaches the rational part of the brain, "gut reactions" that we experience comes much more quickly than the logical pathway. And this is the part where people tend to miss. It comes in so fast that people do not realize its signal coming, and just decide that logical reasoning is the best way to go.

This gut feelings is hard to explain using logic. Say, in a simple form, you're contemplating between cheating your classmate in an exam and not cheating. Your limbic system sends a discomfort signal in your gut, telling that cheating is bad. However, due to how easily the gut reaction is to be ignored, your logic says cheating increases the chance of getting a good score in that exam. Therefore, you cheat.

When dealing with more complicated things, it gets harder to explain rationally. Especially in a situation where you have to explain yourself, and telling your friends or coworkers that you just don't feel like doing a thing leaves them bedazzled. When you tell them that your gut says "no", they would tell you that you don't make sense and say that gut is the place for food.  Blahhhh.

Now you know how it make sense, it comes from your brain as well.