Can intuition be trained?

[marybagain]

An acquaintence of mine, who specialises in risk assessment and safety systems, has recently submitted a paper about the role intuition has in the field of safety assurance and management.

He writes: "Intuition is a process that closely cooperates with the analytic mind, and derives its information from past experiences in the quasi-conscious or

Comments

[reasonjo]

I'm new to this personality typing thing, so I'm still forming my own understandings of all this stuff. Forgive me if I'm way off base here.

My understanding is that analysis (sensing, or sense making) is the opposite of intuition, and personalities fit somewhere along the continuum in between the two. That would mean that every person has some intuitive abilities/skills, but some people are better at using those skills than others. i.e someone that is way down the analytical end of the continuum would find it much more difficult to use their intuition than someone that was halfway along the scale.

I don't think people can become more intuitive, but they can make better use of the intuition they have, even if it is only a very small part of their skill set.

It's 3am here and I'm about 6 hours past my bedtime so I hope that makes sense :)

[nic102]

I believe in MBTI the function of thinking is responsible for analysis. Thinking in MBTI is opposite to feeling. Thinking and feeling are judging functions. People who are more inclined to make logical judgments while making decisions are called 'thinking' types. Those who prefer to make ethical judgments are called 'feeling' types. Intuition is opposed to sensation. These are perceiving functions. Intuition and sensation 'feed' information into the thinking and feeling functions. Intuition pays more attention to subtleties, imagination, patterns and other 'intangible' stuff. Sensation makes use of the five senses and values solid facts. So the analytical process, or thinking, can work with intuition or sensation. Obviously it uses both, but a person would normally prefer one over the other

[reasonjo]

Thanks for explaining that. People explaining things makes it much easier for me to understand things than when I read the same thing in a book or website on a particular topic and then try to make sense of it.

[nic102]

Actually, I wanted to apologise for being presumptuous in thinking that you needed the explanation. :)

[marsdreamer]

I'd say I've trained my intuition over the years and have gotten better at using it. Experience is a good teacher, I know not to dismiss things quite as fast. Basically I've specialized myself in reading people's faces, to see things about their personality. Sounds like an interesting thing to be educating people.. :)

[marsdreamer]

*nods* Exactly..

Some people may need more help than others to learn how to take intuition into account and make decisions utilizing it. I'm thinking that training could help people to intellectually and emotionally find that signal in the first place. Sounds very much like a psychological matter to me.. I get the feeling people don't always spend lots of time looking into themselves and recognizing parts in themselves and the mechanics of how a person works, etc.

[love_thief]

I'm guessing your friend doesn't mean Myers-Briggs iNtuition, just intuition in general. The Gift of Fear is a really good book about using your intuition to stay safe. The author purports that most of us have intuition (as in, gut feelings) we just may not listen to it. Paying attention to your instincts is a way of honing it, I guess

[marybagain]

Yes - I should have made it clear that this was not specifically the M-B interpretation of intuition. The paper refers to the work of Bastick and Patton and also Klein's work on the functioning of human intuition.

Thanks for the reference link.

[saeble]

Intuition is an innate talent.

You can perhaps learn how to utilise it, to 'listen' to it and know when to trust it and when not to... but you sure as hell can't learn intuition as a skill.

In a nutshell, intuition is a sense. You can 'see' things coming. The skill is in the interpretation of what you've assensed.

[marsdreamer]

Maybe that's what they meant? Training people how to utilize the skill that humans innately have.

[marybagain]

Yes - I find myself in sympathy with your comment. If you pracice anything you will get better at it, even if your skill level is low to begin with.

[saeble]

we can only hope so

[apollanaut]

I believe it is possible to develop intuition, whatever one's innate level of talent may be