Scientists explain the phenomenon of intuition with natural causes, but doubts remain: how amazing our insights sometimes turn out to be! Maybe sometimes we really manage to look into the future?
“Our unconscious mind is capable of reacting to events before they happen.”* This statement of the American neuroscientists Antonio Damasio and Antoine Bechara, made on the pages of the world’s main scientific journal Science, seemed to go far beyond the limits of strict natural science knowledge. But it turned out to be impossible to refute their experiments …
Guess the strong card
Damasio and Bechart used a device that measures physiological responses using two electrodes attached to the subject’s fingertip. The first emits a weak electrical signal, the second captures the impulse that has passed through the skin. The stronger the excitement, the better the conduction, because the hands sweat when stressed. On the contrary, the more calm a person is, the worse the current passes. Each participant in the experiments was given a certain amount of money and offered to blindly select one card from the deck. Small ones meant a loss, big ones brought a win. Of course, no one, including the experimenters, knew in advance which card the subject would draw. But the researchers noted a strange phenomenon: most often, when a player drew a losing card, immediately before making a decision, the device recorded a strong electrothermal reaction. That is, having no way to predict the loss with the help of logic, the player’s nervous system became excited and reacted by sending an “alarm signal”.
“This means that the unconscious directs our behavior before the consciousness,” the researchers commented on their results. “Moreover, the mechanism involved in this experiment is different from other reactions.”
Anticipate stress
These experiments shocked scientists so much that not only prominent psychologists, but also physicists interested in the problem of time, joined the study. The question of whether intuition is a natural ability or a paranormal phenomenon has become extremely relevant. Jung pointed out the connection of intuition with the phenomena of prophetic dreams and telepathy, but now for the first time it became possible to “catch” intuition with instruments. This was achieved, in particular, by Professor Dick Bierman of the University of Amsterdam, who came to psychology from experimental physics. In his experiments, volunteers (who also had electrodes attached to their fingers) sat in front of monitors on which various images appeared: idyllic landscapes, pictures of lovers holding hands, laughing children, and so on, alternated with bloody scenes of violence and cruelty. There was no pattern in the demonstration, each subsequent picture was determined by a random number generator in the computer. Result? Most of the participants in a large study experienced significant stress before the computer produced a frightening image.
Is all this enough to conclude that intuition really belongs to parapsychology along with clairvoyance or telepathy? “Probably not,” says artificial intelligence and cognitive psychologist Christine Hardy. – Psychic phenomena that belong to the field of the paranormal, give accurate information or specific visual images. And intuition is a vague and unstable sensation. But today we can assume that the development of intuition can naturally lead to the acquisition of parapsychological abilities.
Christine Hardy believes that two kinds of intuition can be distinguished. The first is “rational” and is related to the constructions of our mind that occur without our knowledge. The second is really more like a supernatural ability. And it can’t be explained logically.
Read more:
- Encounters with the paranormal
Step over time
Daryl J. Bem, a psychologist from Cornell University (USA), goes even further in his reasoning. He argues that our behavior may indeed be determined by events that have not yet happened. “Precognitions and premonitions are special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of certain future events on a person’s current responses, regardless of whether these responses are generated consciously or unconsciously, cognitively or affectively” **. Anomalous retroactive influence, in other words, is the unexplained impact of the future on the present. It turns out that we are endowed with sensitive antennas, capable of picking up signals of the future under certain conditions.
What does this mean for each of us? “Our consciousness has extension in space and time, in the past as well as in the future,” says Christine Hardy. “That’s why we all have a latent ability to foresee.” Perhaps this conclusion sounds too bold. However, the results of Damasio and Bechar’s experiments, which recorded manifestations of foresight – albeit at a purely physiological level – are recognized by the scientific community. And if so, then science simply has no other choice but to find an explanation for the amazing ability to anticipate events, which, as it turns out, we can all demonstrate. Perhaps this explanation will be simple and even everyday. Or maybe it will change our ideas about the world and ourselves. Who knows.
Pass the tests
- Do you believe in your inner strength?
- What is the “guide” of your intuition?
1 Science 1997, 28 February, vol. 275.
2 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011, vol. 100.