The Intuition Problem: why do smart people still get it so, so wrong?

You’d think it was just idiots who ignore it. It isn’t

Every time I’ve ever ignored my immediate reaction to someone, I’ve regretted it. There’s many good reasons to do this: it would be unprofessional, inconvenient, limit your opportunities, or you just don’t have enough evidence to make a fair assessment of whether someone is bad news. Sometimes, I just need to get into the creepy uber driver’s car, because it would be dumber to stand by a field all night. But swallowing feelings of suspicion, anxiety, or just sheer ‘bad vibes’ always ends in staggering self-loathing and shame about how I could have been so stupid. It’s my job to read people. To suss them out. I was supposed to be an expert at this stuff. I score highly in empathy and body language testing. How could I get it so badly wrong? Initially, as in, for 27 or so years, I thought I was just a really gullible, overly trusting, stupid woman.

Then I realised that even my much smarter best friend ignored her own intuition: to far worse results.

When we ignore our intuition, we make dangerous decisions

She is, disclosure, stupidly smart. Fluent in four languages. On the board of everything. Brilliant at reading people. Witty, tough, kind, unbelievably charming, cunning, manipulative (in the best ways), a go-getter, independent, and almost…