The Jury of Intuition: Conflict Detection and Intuitive Processing

Abstract

Recent findings on error or conflict detection during thinking suggest that individuals often intuitively detect conflicts between heuristics and traditional normative standards. This work has generated results that are especially pertinent to the perspectives discussed in this special issue, potentially bridging certain divides. For example, interpreting these findings casts intuition in an entirely new light: perhaps intuitions are also quasi-logical in an important sense. This renders the naturalistic and heuristics and biases accounts presented in the issue more compatible than they seem otherwise. We summarize the most relevant implications of the conflict detection findings and show how they relate to the dual process account of intuition and decision making more broadly. Furthermore, we suggest that this new view of intuitive processes has important implications in organizational settings, especially as it relates to improving performance in typically biased contexts.