Does depression stifle intuition?
Friday, September 8, 2023.
Researchers are fascinated by intuition, and they study it a great deal, as they do depression.
But what blew me away was that there was never a clinical depression study that examined the impact depression has on the intuitive “felt sense” that guides so much of effective daily decision making…until recently.
The researchers were astonished by this oversight, because a well-established aspect of human depression is that clients experience challenges judging, evaluating, and deciding.
As opposed to non-depressed humans who process most daily life decisions intuitively (Kahneman, 2011), depressed humans seem to have difficulty making quick gut-checking decisions.
This new research pursued 3 goals. First, to defend the hypothesis that intuition is impaired in depression against the background of influential theoretical accounts, as well as empirical evidence from basic and clinical research.
Second, to explain recent findings on the relationship between intuition and depression, and to suggest future areas of inquiry that may help to broaden our understanding of exactly how depression impairs decision making.
Finally, (and most near and dear to my heart), the researchers focused on developing clinical interventions which can support depressed humans in making more satisfying, intuitive decisions.
How the study was conducted
The population of study subjects was split 50/50 between humans who suffered with major depressive disorder, while the other half was a healthy control group.
Both groups were given a measure of intuitive thinking which involved finding the link between words.
For example, is there a fourth word that connects these three: “roof,” “floor” and “window”? (answer at the bottom).
Participants were only given 3.5 seconds to make the judgement — this is a little short of what the conscious mind requires time-wise to figure out the answer.
Think about it briefly on your own: even if you can’t identify what the connecting word is, you may well have an intuitive sense about whether one exists or not!
For some of the sets of three words a linking word existed, for others it didn’t.
The results showed that both groups did equally well at finding the linking word (when one existed) but, more critically, the depressed humans had the weakest intuitive sense of whether a linking word existed or not.
This research may explain why people who are clinically depressed claim that they find it burdensome to make ordinary minor decisions about daily life.
Depression inhibits the human ability to access intuitive judgements, the study finds.
The paralysis of analysis…
Depression stifles intuition. Instead, clinical depression seems to foster a tendency to become over analytical. This paralysis of analysis stifles intuition and creative processes in the brain.
While I’m a fan of intuition, it doesn’t always provide an appropriate answer. But the significance of intuition is that it is most often the threshold for entering into effective decision-making.
Absent intuition, human decision making risks being overly fraught, and too-carefully thought out, from the smallest decisions to the largest.
Humans who are depressed are particularly vulnerable to a kind of “paralysis of analysis”, as they spit-roast their thoughts and feelings in their over again in their mind, looking for answers.
It seems clear that our faculties can be obscured without our considered awareness. If someone you love is battling depression, get educated about it, please.
Be well, stay, kind, and Godspeed.
RESEARCH:
Remmers C, Michalak J. Losing Your Gut Feelings. Intuition in Depression. Front Psychol. 2016 Aug 23;7:1291. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01291. PMID: 27602015; PMCID: PMC4993771.
ANSWER: (By the way, another word, (among several) that links the other 3, is the word “building”.)
