We Get Too Deeply Attached to Intuitive Beliefs

我们过于依赖直觉的信念

Once an intuition hits, we cling to it despite the dangers. Intuition can, for example, lead to all sorts of cognitive and social biases, like the anchoring effect (where decisions are swayed by the first piece of information thrown at us) and racial prejudice. Even in areas where the heart should rule, like romance, it can be clueless. 一旦直觉出现，我们会不顾危险坚持它。例如，直觉可以导致各种认知和社会偏见，比如锚定效应（即决策受第一条信息的影响）和种族偏见。即使在感情应该主宰的领域，比如爱情，也可能是无知的。

In a classic study, when men on a bridge were stopped by an attractive woman and asked to complete a questionnaire, they were more likely to try to contact her afterward if it was a scary suspension bridge, misattributing emotional arousal to sexual attraction.在一项经典研究中，当男人在桥上被一个漂亮的女人拦住并要求完成一份调查问卷时，如果是一座可怕的吊桥，他们更可能在事后联系她，错误地将情感唤起归因于性吸引。

Our dreams, those unwilled visions of the night, hold a powerful aura of truth we can’t quite extinguish. People report they’re more likely to change their travel plans if they dreamed about a plane crash than if the government announced an actual travel warning. And test-takers can’t shake the “first instinct fallacy.” Three in four college students reported that when reconsidering an answer on an exam, their initial choice will usually turn out to be correct. But when erase marks on actual exams were analyzed, the reverse was true: Twice as many changed answers went from wrong to right as right to wrong.

我们的梦，那些夜晚未被意识到的景象，拥有一种我们无法完全扑灭的强大的真理光环。人们报告说，如果梦见飞机失事，他们更有可能改变旅行计划，而不是政府宣布实际的旅行警告。而考生也无法摆脱“第一本能谬误”。四分之三的大学生表示，在重新考虑考*答案试**时，他们最初的选择通常是正确的。但当分析实际考试中的抹掉分数时，情况正好相反：从错误到正确的改变答案数量是从正确到错误的两倍。

“In general,” says psychologist Sascha Topolinski of the University of Cologne in Germany, “intuition is something emotional that makes you confident in an idea. ‘You cannot take away this feeling from me. I do not trust this car seller. I can’t tell you why, but I’m confident I don’t like him.’”“一般来说，”德国科隆大学的心理学家Sascha Topolinski说，“直觉是一种情感，让你对一个想法充满信心。”你不能把这种感觉从我身上带走。我不相信这个汽车销售商。我不能告诉你为什么，但我相信我不喜欢他。

Intuition about the accuracy of an intuition is even more fallible. When people were asked to rate their confidence that their “gut feelings” had steered them skillfully on a test, confidence ratings had no relationship with actual performance.关于直觉准确性的直觉更容易出错。当人们被要求对他们的“直觉”在测试中巧妙地引导他们的信心进行评分时，信心评分与实际表现没有关系。

Even when we acknowledge the absurdity of an intuition, we often stick with it. Consider superstitions. I’m an atheist who knocks on wood while knowing it’s hogwash. “When an intuition captures attention and triggers emotions, it may be especially hard to shake,” says Jane Risen, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. She calls maintaining beliefs we know to be false “acquiescing to intuition.” Intuition may not be magic, but we are truly under its spell.即使我们承认直觉的荒谬，我们也常常坚持它。考虑迷信。我是一个无神论者，敲木头的时候知道那是废话。芝加哥大学的心理学家Jane Risen说：“当直觉捕捉到注意力并触发情感时，它可能特别难以撼动。”她把保持我们知道是错误的信念称为“默许直觉”。直觉可能不是魔法，但我们确实被它迷住了。

Intuition Can Be Improved—With Practice

直觉可以通过实践来提高

To have good intuitions in any domain requires a lot of practice. But not all domains are amenable to good intuitions. First, there must be regularities linking events and outcomes—the domain must have high “validity.” 在任何领域都有良好的直觉需要大量的实践。但并非所有领域都服从于良好的直觉。首先，必须有规律性地将事件和结果联系起来。该领域必须具有较高的“有效性”.

Gary Klein, a psychologist at the Washington, D.C., consulting firm MacroCognition, has long explored the role of wisdom in the intuition of experts such as fire commanders, who can size up a burning building quickly. “Fires follow the laws of physics,” says Klein.华盛顿特区咨询公司MacroCognition的心理学家加里·克莱因（Gary Klein）长期以来一直在探索智慧在专家直觉中的作用，比如消防指挥官，他们可以快速判断燃烧的建筑物。克莱恩说：“火遵循物理定律。”。

The global economy is significantly more chaotic, preventing predictability. (As Gigerenzer notes, five years before the 2007 housing crisis, the president of the American Economic Association said, “Macroeconomics…has succeeded. Its central problem of depression prevention has been solved.”)全球经济明显更加混乱，无法预测。（正如吉格伦泽所指出的，在2007年房地产危机爆发五年前，美国经济协会主席说，“宏观经济学……取得了成功。其预防萧条的核心问题已经解决。”）

Whether you should trust your feelings should hinge not on the strength of those feelings—we have poor intuitions about intuitions—but on the structure of the domain you’re operating in. Look outward, not inward.你是否应该相信你的感觉不应该取决于这些感觉的强度，我们对直觉的直觉很差，而应该取决于你所处领域的结构。向外看，不要向内看。

Second, you need clear feedback to hone your intuitive decisions. A review of the literature shows that weather forecasters, test pilots, and chess masters had more reliable expertise than psychologists, admissions officers, and judges. Outcomes in the latter’s areas are fuzzier and can play out long after you’ve made a decision. That goes for much of everyday life, too.“You don’t do a diary and an Excel file where you write, ‘Okay, on October 1, I made this decision, or I bought this product,’ and so on,” Topolinski says. We lack hard data about what we do.其次，你需要清晰的反馈来磨练你的直觉决策。对文献的回顾表明，天气预报员、试飞员和象棋大师比心理学家、招生官员和法官拥有更可靠的专业知识。后者领域的结果更加模糊，可能在你做出决定后很久才会出现。这也适用于日常生活的很多方面。托波林斯基说：“你不会在日记和Excel文件中写‘好吧，10月1日，我做了这个决定，或者我买了这个产品’，等等。”。我们缺乏关于我们所做工作的可靠数据。

Good intuitions in one domain don’t guarantee good intuitions in another. As Gigerenzer puts it, “A soccer player who has great intuitions about scoring a goal may have bad intuitions about spending his money. So there cannot be a general test of intuition.” Even within a domain, expertise can vary between different kinds of tasks. 一个领域的好直觉并不保证另一个领域的好直觉。正如吉格伦泽所说，“一个对进球有很强直觉的足球运动员可能对花钱有不好的直觉。因此，直觉不可能有一个通用的测试。”即使在一个领域内，专业知识也可能因不同的任务而异。

We can use focused thinking not only to train our intuitive expertise over time but also to invite or avoid intuitions in the moment. Metaphors and sketches are excellent tools to help us reframe problems or see solutions more clearly. 我们可以使用集中思考，不仅可以随着时间的推移培养我们的直觉专业知识，还可以在瞬间邀请或避免直觉。隐喻和草图是帮助我们重新定义问题或更清楚地看到解决方案的极好工具。

Klein coaches people to consider premortems: When considering a plan, imagine from a future vantage point that it failed and think about what went wrong. This thinking tool makes weak points real—intuitive objects rather than abstract and ignorable hypotheses. 克莱因教导人们考虑死亡：当考虑一个计划时，想象一下未来的优势，它失败了，并思考出了什么问题。这种思维工具使弱点成为真正直观的对象，而不是抽象和可忽略的假设。

Philosopher Daniel Dennett of Tufts University has coined the term intuition pumps for thought experiments meant to reframe problems. But he notes that they can be used for good or for evil.塔夫茨大学的哲学家丹尼尔·丹尼特（Daniel Dennett）创造了“直觉泵”一词，用于重新构造问题的思维实验。但他指出，它们可以用来做好事，也可以用来作恶。

“One should learn how easy it is to build bogus intuition pumps that will provoke fist-pounding intuitions that aren’t worth your allegiance,” Dennett says. “But also, intuition pumps can help you out of imagination blockades. Caution is advised.”丹尼特说：“人们应该知道，建立虚假的直觉泵是多么容易，因为它会激起不值得你效忠的拳头般的直觉。”。“但是，直觉泵也可以帮助你摆脱想象障碍。建议谨慎。”

The role of deliberation in honing instincts and knowing when to trust them reveals reflection’s close collaboration with intuition, in both its development and deployment. “Our reflective deliberation scaffolds off our intuition, but it goes both ways,” says psychologist Gordon Pennycook of the University of Regina in Canada. We also tend to use them in tandem.深思熟虑在磨砺直觉和知道何时信任直觉方面的作用，揭示了反思在发展和运用过程中与直觉的密切合作。加拿大里贾纳大学的心理学家Gordon Pennycook说：“我们的反思性思考摆脱了我们的直觉，但这是双向的。”我们也倾向于同时使用它们