Expert intuition: what it is, features, 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 the rapid recognition of the context in which it is to be carried out.

Throughout this article we'll see what expert intuition is and what impact it has on our lives.

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The two systems of thought

Before explaining what expert intuition is in greater depth, it is worth giving a few brushstrokes on the two ways in which the human mind develops thoughts and ideas. According to psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel kahneman, thoughts are created through two antagonistic cognitive systems that are discussed below.

System 1 is the way to think fast and intuitively. This thought system serves to process what surrounds us and to seek protection (p. g., when feeling fear, escape).

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 (p. (eg, listening to a song on the radio and turning your head until you can remember the name of the singer).

Now we will go on to explain in greater detail what expert intuition consists of.

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What is expert intuition?

Expert intuition is the ability to find a good solution to a certain situation very quickly that professionals with extensive experience have. When these cases occur, the person has not needed to reason why that solution because he has solved numerous similar problems in previous occasions and, that extensive experience, allows him 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 long-standing professionals had developed intuitive capabilities in their job.

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 with health professionals, police, firefighters, elite athletes, among other professions.

Here are some examples in which expert intuition is carried out in order to understand it in more detail.

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Examples of its application in professions

Klein's research with fire marshals is a prime example of how expert intuition works.

When a firefighter faced a difficult situation during a fire, he focused solely on the wisest choice that he considered among the wide repertoire that he had learned throughout his years of experience.

Then he previously did an imaginative simulation of his action plan to see if it could work, in which case he would take action. Otherwise, he would look for another option. All this thought upside down on the fly while he intervened immediately.

Klein presented a real case of a firefighter who, when he was trying to put out the fire in a burning house, quickly sensed that the best option he had at that moment was to escape urgently. Soon after, 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 the reactions of patients based on what is being talked about in therapy and as a result you can develop an expert intuition to find the right words and tone to help the patient calm down and convey that she can rely on her help, as well as being able to understand the problem that is happening to her patient and, depending on what she is asking, the way in which she is going to answer.

After having seen some examples of expert intuition put into practice, we will see how to develop the necessary skills to be able to carry it out successfully.

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How can we develop expert intuition?

It is important to note that a true expert in a domain or profession know what his limitations are in the area in question.

The fact that a professional can develop the necessary capacities so that his expert intuition is effective from his trajectory, 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 repetitive patterns contextually, in a way that makes it possible to make predictions about what may be triggered after a certain intuition.

What's more, to have that expert intuition it is not enough to master a single skill related to the profession performed, but it is necessary to handle several skills well.

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 solve 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 be able to reach a good level in chess or, what is the same, practice 5 hours a day for 6 years in which you learn 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.

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Can we trust this way to solve problems?

When someone trusts their intuition and beliefs relies on the cognitive ease with which those ideas come to mind and the sense of coherence they have. That is to say, it does not find any contradiction when putting this idea into practice and also considers that the results will be satisfactory.

However, 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% 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.

Then we could be guided by two factors to assess the probability that an intuition will come true:

• That it occurs in a regular context, so that what is going to happen a posteriori can be predictable.
• Have practiced enough in similar contexts, being able to have learned various regular patterns and their outcomes.

If both cases are given, there is a good chance that our intuition is valid, as it is in the case of chess, where the context is regular while the expert has thousands of hours of practice behind him delivered.

When an expert intuition occurs in a regular environment and our reasoning through System 2 of thought has been able to understand and memorize these 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 rely on expert intuition.

Trying to have an expert intuition in situations that are unpredictable is a form of self-deception. Since, in case the intuition is fulfilled, if there is no reasonably predictable situational pattern or similar to others already experienced previously, the success of this intuition would be rather due to the luck. For this reason, we cannot trust our intuition if there is not a 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 put these intuitions into words.

Some modes of intuition that can be developed quickly, such as the intuition that arises as a result of a bad experience in the past (e.g., feeling tension when passing through a street where in the past there was a very unpleasant).

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 ensues, 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 of leaving the fire scene to escape a danger of collapse and this was partly due to the fact that he had been for many times reflecting on many types of fires and on everything that could happen without it having yet happened in his life real.

There is another true story of a young army officer who had no combat experience who had been tasked with an exploration mission in unknown territory when, at the time After passing through a narrow ravine, he began to feel tension because during his formative years he had learned to detect that places like that were conducive to being ambushed.

It is usually learned quickly through the emotions that certain contexts arouse; But developing an expert intuition requires many years and hours of practice, because being an expert in a field or profession It does not require mastering only one aptitude, but it is necessary to handle with solvency a great diversity of attitudes interrelated.