Expert Intuition: What It Is, Characteristics, And How It Works
Expert intuition is a type of intuition based on experience and based on the repeated practice of certain actions related to the profession or modality of which the subject is considered an expert.
And through this intuition the expert can successfully solve a task in a short time through rapid recognition of the context in which it is going to be carried out.
Throughout this article We will see what expert intuition is and what impact it has on our lives.
Before explaining what expert intuition is in greater depth, it is worth giving a few strokes about the two ways the human mind develops thoughts and ideas According to psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, thoughts are created by two antagonistic cognitive systems that are explained below.
System 1 is the way to think quickly and intuitively This thought system is used to process what is around us and to seek protection (e.g., feeling afraid, escaping).
System 2 is slow and reflective thinking This type of thinking is analytical, which allows us to think about the pros and cons and then make the decision that we consider correct (for example, listening to a song on the radio and thinking about it until we can remember the name of the song). singer).
Now we will explain in greater detail what expert intuition consists of.
What is expert intuition?
Expert intuition is the ability to find a good solution to a given situation very quickly that professionals with extensive experience have When these cases occur, the person has not needed to reason why this solution was given because they have solved numerous similar problems on previous occasions and this extensive experience allows them to recognize the problem and then the corresponding solution in a matter of seconds.
Psychologist Gary Klein conducted extensive research on expert intuition where he analyzed how professionals with a long career had developed intuitive abilities in their work.
This type of intuition can be crucial in professions that require making decisions on the fly because they are urgently required, as is the case of health professionals, police officers, firefighters, elite athletes, among other professions.
Below, some examples will be presented in which expert intuition is carried out with the aim of being able to understand it in more detail.
Klein’s research with fire chiefs is a clear example of how expert intuition works.
When a firefighter was faced with a complicated situation during a fire, he focused only on the most correct option that he considered among the extensive repertoire that he had learned throughout his years of experience.
So He previously did a simulation in imagination of his action plan to check if it could work, in which case it would take action. Otherwise, he would look for another option. All of this thought out in his head as he went along while he immediately intervened.
Klein presented a real case of a firefighter who, when he was trying to put out the fire of a burning house, quickly sensed that the best option he had at that moment was to escape urgently Shortly afterward the house collapsed. This is an example that explains expert intuition as an everyday experience that is acquired after years of professional experience.
A psychotherapist with extensive experience in consultation has had many opportunities to understand patients’ reactions based on what is being talked about in therapy and, thanks to this, can develop expert intuition to find the words and tone. appropriate when it comes to helping the patient calm down and conveying to him that he can trust his help, in addition to being able to understand the problem that is happening to his patient and, depending on what he is asking, the way in which he is going to respond. .
After having seen some examples of expert intuition put into practice, we will move on to see how to develop the necessary skills to be able to carry it out successfully.
How can we develop expert intuition?
It is important to highlight that a true expert in a domain or profession know what your limitations are in the area in question
The fact that a professional can develop the necessary skills so that his expert intuition is effective from his career, It depends fundamentally on the immediacy of the feedback received about your intuition and also on the fact that you have been able to put it into practice on many occasions.
Another relevant aspect to develop expert intuition is that it is done with contextually repetitive patterns, so that it makes it possible to make predictions about what can be triggered after a certain intuition.
Besides, To have that expert intuition, it is not enough to master a single skill related to the profession held but you need to master several skills competently.
Chess is a good example to explain how to acquire expert intuition. A chess master is able to instantly understand the position of a certain figure and immediately find a solution to successfully resolve the move.
According to some research carried out with chess masters, it has been shown that at least 10,000 hours of practice are necessary to reach a good level in chess or, in other words, practicing 5 hours a day for 6 years in which one learns. thousands of plays.
In this way, depending on the arrangement of the chess pieces on the board, you can intuit the ways in which your opponent can attack and thus defend himself in one way or another. This practice of 10,000 hours to master chess could be extrapolated to the mastery of other modalities.
Can we trust this way of solving problems?
When someone trusts their intuition and beliefs It is supported by the cognitive ease with which these ideas come to mind and the sense of coherence they have That is to say, he does not find any contradiction when it comes to putting this idea into practice and he also believes that the results will be satisfactory.
Now, even if these conditions are met, there is no guarantee that the results you expect after carrying out your idea will occur.
That is why you should never trust 100% in an intuition, even if it is ours. Since, no matter how much confidence we have in our intuition, there is no absolute certainty of knowing to what extent it is valid.
So We could be guided by two factors to assess the probability of an intuition coming true:
That it occurs in a regular context, so that what is going to happen afterwards can be predictable.
Have practiced enough in similar contexts, and may have learned various regular patterns and their outcomes.
If both cases occur, there is a good chance that our intuition is valid, as is the case in chess, where the context is regular while the expert has thousands of hours of dedicated practice behind him.
When an expert intuition occurs in a regular environment and our reasoning through system 2 of thought has been able to understand and memorize those regularities, it is possible to predict what will happen next and, in this way, it is possible to make an urgent decision and with a high degree of certainty that it will be carried out successfully.
In cases where all of the above is true, we could trust expert intuition.
Trying to have expert intuition in situations that are unpredictable is a form of self-deception. Since, if the intuition is fulfilled, if there is no reasonably predictable situational pattern or similar to others already experienced previously, the success of said intuition would rather be due to luck. Therefore, we cannot trust our intuition if there is no stable regularity in the environment in which it is triggered.
Accurate intuitions are due to the fact that system 1 of your thinking has learned to establish with great speed of action without the need for system 2 to have learned to express these intuitions in words
Some modes of intuition that can develop quickly, such as intuition that arises as a result of a bad experience in the past (e.g., feeling tension when passing through a street where a very unpleasant incident occurred in the past) ).
Although, it is true that many times you can feel anxiety in a certain context or, when someone is talking about a specific topic, without consciously recognizing any action or situation that triggers said state of anxiety In the event that an unpleasant experience occurs afterward, we retrospectively speak of that state of anxiety that precedes the unpleasant event as an intuition.
In the case of the aforementioned firefighter, he had that intuition to leave the scene of the fire to escape from a danger of collapse and this was caused in part because he had been on many occasions reflecting on many types of fires and everything that could happen. to happen without it having yet happened in real life.
There is another true story of a young army officer who had no experience in combat who had been entrusted with an exploration mission in an unknown territory when, at the moment of passing through a narrow ravine, he began to feel tension because during his After years of training he had learned to detect that places like that were favorable for receiving an ambush.
It is usually learned quickly through the emotions that certain contexts awaken ; But developing expert intuition requires many years and hours of practice, because being an expert in a field or profession does not require mastering just one skill, but rather it is necessary to successfully handle a great diversity of interrelated attitudes.
