Which is Better: Logic or Intuition?

How effective is your decision-making? Do you rely on logic to carefully work through details, or trust your intuition and gut feeling? Research shows both approaches have limits. It’s helpful to recognise your natural preference. This allows you to compensate for any imbalance and avoid over-relying on one method.

Is There A Sixth Sense?

In his book Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow, Daniel Kahneman shares a gripping story of a team of firemen in a burning house. While they were spraying water in the kitchen, the Commander suddenly yelled, “Get out of here now!” without knowing why. Moments later, the kitchen floor collapsed beneath them. It turned out that the Commander’s unusual feelings—hot ears and a quiet fire—triggered his gut instinct to act. He later realised that the fire was actually in the basement, beneath where they had been standing.

This is a powerful example of how experts use intuition to make life-saving decisions. However, relying solely on gut feelings for every choice can make us overly reactive and driven by emotions. The amygdala, which controls emotions, survival instincts, and memory, strongly influences the brain. While it helps us in dangerous situations, it can also lead to irrational decisions in everyday life. Pressure, past experiences, or even a specific word or tone can trigger our emotions. It’s important to recognise these feelings and manage them appropriately to avoid letting emotions guide our decisions in the wrong direction.

Don’t Rely On One Mode Of Thinking

Many entrepreneurs rely on their gut feelings when hiring people, often preferring candidates who are similar to themselves. However, this can lead to stress and frustration. The people they need to run their business and execute their strategy are often very different from them.

While intuition can be helpful, relying solely on logic and analysis can also have its downsides. Sometimes, focusing too much on facts and details can cause us to miss the solution right in front of us. Many scientists have spent years on a problem, only to have a breakthrough when they relaxed and stopped thinking about it.

I had a personal experience with this recently. I was working on my photography hobby, editing photos on a 2TB external hard drive because my desktop’s internal drives were full. While deleting a small subfolder, I accidentally deleted the entire main folder containing 42GB of photos and videos from my recent holiday. I checked everything but couldn’t find the folder. My logical mind told me the data was gone for good since there was no space on the internal drives. I thought I had lost everything.

I was upset but my intuition told me not to switch anything off. So, I left the desktop and external drive running for two days over the weekend until I could contact my IT specialist. When I did, he pointed me to the recycle bin—and there was the folder I thought I had lost. My logic had convinced me the folder couldn’t be there, which stopped me from checking. Luckily, I trusted my intuition and the folder was saved.

The key lesson I learned was to trust my intuition when it says not to act too quickly. My IT specialist explained that if I had turned off the computer, it would have permanently deleted the folder. By not switching off, I was able to restore it. This experience taught me that sometimes, logic can blind us to the simplest solution, while intuition can help us find our way out of tricky situations.

The Paradox Of Logical Intuition

There is an interesting paradox in our approach to decisions: we need a balance between being analytical and intuitive. Relying too much on one approach can lead to poor decisions and missed opportunities. The Harrison Assessment Paradox Report explains this paradox and offers a useful proverb: “Use your logical mind to solve day-to-day issues, but let your inner vision guide your direction.”

The two main traits in this paradox are:

• Analytical: The ability to logically examine facts and problems.
• Intuitive: The ability to trust your ‘hunches’ or gut feelings when making decisions.

Some people may not like the term ‘hunch’ because it sounds like guessing, but in this context, it means using a feeling or premonition, not just guessing. Both analytical thinking and intuition are mental skills that help us understand and solve problems. They work together and are not opposites. Analytical thinking mainly uses the left side of the brain, while intuition mainly uses the right.

Analytical thinking is great for complex problems where logic is needed. However, some situations involve unknown or unclear factors, making intuition more helpful for decision-making.

When there’s an imbalance—such as being strong in Analytical but weak in Intuition—we may become too focused, or “Laser Logical.” This can make us miss important details and connections, like when a quiet inner voice tells us something important, but our logic prevents us from listening to it. For example, when I was working on my desktop, my intuition told me not to switch it off, but my logic ignored the simple solution of looking at the deleted folder.

On the other hand, when Intuition is strong but Analytical is weak, we may make decisions that seem ungrounded or superstitious, as our thinking lacks structure. If both traits are weak, we become a ‘Disinterested Decision-maker,’ who neither looks at the facts carefully nor trusts their gut feelings.

The best approach is to develop Logical Intuition—the ability to use both analytical thinking and intuition at the same time. This helps avoid the risks of being overly logical or too intuitive. A person with this balance makes smarter, more effective decisions by exploring their hunches while also using their rational mind to evaluate and confirm those feelings.

In short, the key to effective decision-making is using both logic and intuition, allowing each to guide and support the other.

Are There Gender Differences?

There is ongoing debate about the gender differences between men and women, particularly when it comes to being more logical or intuitive. Some studies suggest that women have more connections between brain hemispheres, while men have more connections within each hemisphere. However, these studies often have small sample sizes or focus on specific age groups, so the results aren’t conclusive. In fact, the differences between the brains of any two people—whether men or women—are much greater than the differences between men and women as a group. This is because many factors influence brain development over a lifetime. Of course, this could change if new research comes along to challenge these ideas!

The key point in this discussion is understanding the Paradoxes of traits like logic and intuition. These concepts encourage us to develop both traits, not just focus on the one we prefer. It’s about recognising imbalances and working to improve them. You don’t have to stop doing what feels natural, but you can work on balancing analytical thinking and intuition. Striving for this balance can improve your decision-making. This can be done through greater self-awareness, being open to feedback, and a willingness to grow.

I invite you to think about your own preferences and those of your colleagues, managers, or team members. How do you and your team make decisions? What changes could you make to use Logical Intuition and have a more Balanced Versatility in your decision-making approach?

If you are interested in exploring where you and your managers stand on this Paradox and the eleven other Paradoxes in the assessment just contact David at info@talent4performance.co.uk.

Check out the short 150-second video about this paradox on LinkedIn: 
How effective is your decision-making?

Remember . . . stay curious!

David Klaasen

©David Klaasen – May 2016