Is it rational to trust your gut feelings? A neuroscientist explains

Imagine the director of a big company announcing an important decision and justifying it with it being based on a gut feeling.

This would be met with disbelief – surely important decisions have to be thought over carefully, deliberately and rationally?

• Valerie van Mulukom
• The Conversation

Indeed, relying on your intuition generally has a bad reputation, especially in the Western part of the world where analytic thinking has been steadily promoted over the past decades.

Gradually, many have come to think that humans have progressed from relying on primitive, magical and religious thinking to analytic and scientific thinking.

As a result, they view emotions and intuition as fallible, even whimsical, tools.

However, this attitude…

• Is it rational…