A recent study carried out by psychologists at the University of Missouri-Columbia (USA) has concluded that people who are carried away by their intuition or instinct (“having a hunch”) are less likely to commit acts immoral – such as infidelity – compared to those who tend to let go of their intuition.
“ Some people trust their instincts when making decisions, while other people are less dependent on them and don’t pay much attention to gutting feelings. We were interested in studying how individual differences in intuition affect moral behavior and other relevant outcomes , ”explains Sarah Ward, study leader.
For his study, Ward conducted two experiments with more than 100 participants, the majority of whom were women. After taking a questionnaire about their tendency to trust intuition, the volunteers had to imagine that they had acted with low morale in their work environment, blaming another colleague for their mistake. The same experiment was repeated with the control group but changing the conclusion: they had to imagine that they had assumed their failure.
Previous studies had suggested that performing an immoral act makes people feel “dirty” and tend, for example, to pay more for something in order to feel better: “If you feel bad about a moral transgression, you may want to remove yourself that weight off you, to clean yourself;our study found that participants who were more reliant on intuition were willing to pay more for hand soap after an alleged moral transgression”, Clarifies Ward.
In the second experiment,participants were asked to write about a time when they acted immorally and then had to take an unsolvable intelligence test. The test had 10 questions and each participant received a document with the answers placed face down on their desks; they were also told that whoever solved the test correctly would receive a lottery ticket (an incentive to cheat).The results revealed that up to 23% cheated on the exam.
“Our second experiment showed that people who tend to trust their instincts are less likely to be unfaithful after reflecting on a time when they behaved immorally.We believe this is because people try to make up for bad behavior in the past by acting morally in the present., and that this tendency to try to compensate for past actions can be especially pronounced among people who trust their intuition ”, Ward sentence.
The study has been published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences .
