Choose Logic Over Intuition

“Intuition can help us make good decisions without expending the time and effort needed to calculate the optimal decision, but shortcuts sometimes lead to dead ends,” says The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Intuition does have its uses, but it should not be exalted above analysis. Intuition can’t be beat when we are deciding which ice cream we like more, which songs are catchier, which politician is most charismatic,” write authors Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. “The essence of those examples is the absence of any objective standard of quality—there’s no method of analysis that will decisively determine which supermodel is more attractive or which orchestra audition was superior. The key to successful decision making is knowing when to trust your intuition and when to be wary of it.”