They say that the gut feeling you have is oftentimes right especially when it comes to relationships and you better believe it. A recent study, which was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, has shown that when you regularly follow your intuition, you may be less likely to cheat.
A graduate student from University of Missouri-Columbia, Sarah J. Ward, has worked with her psychology professor, Laura A. King to determine the advantages of believing in intuitions. Also known as "gut instinct," it is defined as the ability to comprehend something immediately without the need for reasoning. Research in the past believes that intuition can bring new information on almost everything from depression to social intelligence.
Ward explained in a press release that some people trust their gut feelings every time they make a decision, while others pay less attention to them even if they have experienced it. She also explained that her professor and herself were interested to know more about the differences in intuition and its effect to moral behavior and other relevant outcomes.
She conducted two experiments intended to determine if relying on intuition affected moral behavior. She looked for more than 100 participants, most of them were women, and asked each participant to answer a series of intuition related questions. The first experiment asked participants to read a story explaining how they had done something wrong at work, but blamed it on a workmate. Other participants who served as controls read the same story, but this time took full responsibility for their mistakes.
Some studies show that people acting immorally feel guilty afterward, that may have caused feelings of embarrassment and guilt. Ward guessed, then that those participants reading a story about blaming their mistake on a co-worker would pay for hand-cleaning products, like hand sanitizer. She explained it saying that if people feel bad about their misbehavior, you feel like there is a need to cleanse yourself.
This study has found that those participants who were relied more on their intuition paid more for hand sanitizers after reading about a moral wrongdoing.
