Understanding intuition from the human resource practitioners’
perspective
Eugene Sadler-Smith, Surrey Business School, University of Surrey1
Abstract
This research aimed to understand intuition from the perspective of the Human Resources’
practitioner. We used a novel linguistic methodology based on de-nominalization to elicit
participants’ experiences of intuition (N = 124). Based on our analysis we: refined the
construct of intuition through redefinition; interpreted the subjective experience of intuition
as comprising three dimensions (‘intuiting’, ‘intuition’, and ‘enacting’); discovered that
intuitive affect has two facets (‘bodily awareness’ and ‘cognitive awareness’). We outline the
theoretical implications and the relevance of our findings for Human Resources practice and
make suggestions for further qualitative and phenomenological studies of intuition.
Keywords: decision making; intuition; Human Resources
Introduction
It is well –established that human resource practitioners, in common with other
organizational actors, make us of intuition in decision making and problem solving (Miles &
Sadler-Smith, 2014). Although there has been a surge of interest in intuition (e.g. Dane &
Pratt, 2007; Dörfler & Akermann, 2013; Hodgkinson & Clarke, 2007; Miller & Ireland,
2005; Sadler-Smith & Shefy, 2004; Salas, Rosen & DiazGranados, 2010; Sinclair &
Ashkanasy, 2005) there is a scarcity of qualitative field work and little intuition research in
the area of Human Resources (Akinci & Sadler-Smith, 2012; Miles & Sadler-Smith, 2014).
Given that intuition is especially relevant in the social and expert judgements that are
involved in Human Resource practice the objective this research was to elicit first-hand
accounts from Human Resource practitioners of their subjective experiences of intuition.
Background
Taking the ‘intuitive judgment (the outcome)-versus-intuiting (the process)’ distinction (Dane
and Pratt, 2007) as a starting point, we sought a novel way to access subjects’ experiences of
intuition; in doing so we turned to linguistics.
In English grammar the term ‘nominalization’ means ‘noun-like’, therefore to ‘denominalize’ a noun is to “make it less noun-like, or turn it into a verb, adjective, or some
other grammatical category” (Payne, 1997: 94), e.g. ‘intuition’ renders ‘intuit’. Through denominalizing we argue that using the verb (intuit) as the basis for empirical inquiry could
render intuition more transparent. This allows research participants to retrieve and reflect on
direct personal occurrences of the action instantiated in the verb (intuiting), rather than
undertake de-contextualized musings on the meaning of the noun (intuition). So, rather than
asking Human Resources practitioners the somewhat dull and de-personalized question ‘what
is intuition?’ or ‘what does intuition mean to you?’ we instead de-nominalized ‘intuition’ and
asked: ‘what happens when you intuit?’ formulated as a sentence-completion task: “when I
intuit...’.
But why did we choose Human Resources as our research context? One reason is that
intuition is relevant for and used in the decision making processes in Human Resources
1
Email for correspondence: e.sadler-smith@surrey.ac.uk
practice (Miles & Sadler-Smith, 2014). However, a problem is that Human Resources
organizational decision makers often overestimate the validity of their intuition whilst
simultaneously underestimating the validity of paper-and-pencil tests. As Highhouse (2008)
noted: one of the greatest achievements of IO psychology has been the development of
selection decision aids, whilst one of its greatest failures has been an inability to convince
employers to use them. Highhouse also lays some of the blame at the door of popular books
which “extol the virtues of intuitive decision making” (2008: 334) such as Malcolm
Gladwell’s 2005 best-seller Blink: The power of thinking without thinking.
However, although there is a plethora of knowledge regarding applicant reactions to
employee selection procedures (Diab, Pui, Yankelevich and Highhouse, 2011) there is a
dearth of understanding about why Human Resources practitioners find intuition so appealing
and how they use it in employee selection decisions (Miles & Sadler-Smith, 2014).
Many Human Resources practitioners are generalists involved in recruitment, selection,
reward and learning and development, use intuition in selection decisions (as research
suggests) then it is also likely that they use in in Human Resource Development (HRD)
decision making as well, hence understanding intuition is relevant to HRD research and
practice.
Method, Sample and Procedure
We asked our Human Resources’ participants ‘what happens when you intuit?’ We did so in
the convenient setting of professional development seminars on the topic of intuition. Our
participants elected to attend a seminar for personal and professional development purposes.
The seminars (five in total, lasting an hour-and-half each) were conducted by the author and
held at various locations across the south east of the UK. The total number of participants
was 124.
At the beginning of each seminar, following a brief introduction, participants were requested
to recollect an occasion (or occasions) during which they had experienced an intuition. They
were allowed a short time during which to reflect on this experience, and from their
recollections and reflections were asked to construct a general answer the question ‘what
happens when you intuit?’ They did this by completing, on a pre-printed form, the firstperson statement ‘when I intuit…’ Participants were also invited to indicate their gender (58
per cent female, 33 per cent male, and nine percent undeclared). Completed forms were
collected-in at the end of the seminar, and responses were typed-up verbatim in MS Word
and transferred to MS Excel for further coding, sorting, and cross-tabulating. Participation
was voluntary and anonymity was guaranteed.
Data Analysis
The data set was 124 individual responses; these varied in length from six words (e.g. “when
I intuit I generate ideas”) to 44 words (i.e. “when I intuit my gut tells me I need to seek more
information and ask more questions to better understand a situation. My head starts to
question what I am seeing or hearing and I feel I need to do something or take action”).
There were 528 different words and 2082 words in total in the data set.
We decomposed participants’ responses into ‘units of text’ which were then analysed and
coded. The final coding scheme consisted of 16 1st order concepts which were labelled
according to their content, for example ‘Experiences’, ‘Gut reactions’, ‘Anticipating’, etc.
The labelling of the concepts was participant-based (Langley & Abdallah, 2011) reflecting as
closely as possible the words participants used. We then moved from participant-based
concepts to researcher-based themes representing six superordinate categories as follows:
‘Antecedents’; ‘Processes’; ‘Bodily awareness’; ‘Cognitive awareness’; ‘Outcomes’;
‘Behaviours’. We then stepped-up the level of abstraction in the analysis one more time and
classified the categories into three superordinate aggregate dimensions, i.e. ‘Intuiting’,
‘Intuition’, and ‘Enacting’.
Discussion of Findings
The overall analytical approach and the derived data structure is consistent with the method
recommended by Gioia, Corley and Hamilton (2013) for inductive research, as implemented
in, for example, Nag, Corley and Gioia (2007) and Pratt, Rockmann, and Kaufmann (2006).
The data structure is shown in Figure 1 and sample units of text for each of the 1st order
concepts are shown in Table 1. On the basis of the analysis of our findings we define
intuition, as follows: positively- or negatively-valenced feeling states, manifesting cognitively
and somatically, arising rapidly and subconsciously, informed by prior learning and
experiences, affording proximate evaluations which guide subsequent behaviours.
Figure 1. Data structure (dimensions, themes and concepts)
Experiences
Antecedents
Patterns
Intuiting
Automatic
Processes
Fast
Subconscious
Feelings
Bodily
Awareness
Gut reactions
Intuition
Sense
Cognitive
Awareness
Mental images
Insight
Outcomes
Negative signal
Positive signal
Enacting
Anticipating
Deciding
Behaviours
Judging
Questioning
Table 1. Data structure and sample units of text (numerals in brackets indicate which participant is being quoted)
Dimension
Theme
1st Order Concept
Sample unit of text
Intuiting
Antecedents
Experiences
“Elements of my experience come together to shape my thoughts and
actions” (19)
Patterns
“I recognise cues” (31)
Automatic
“Feel something to be true without analysing it” (22)
Fast
“Make decision quickly” (33)
Subconscious
“Feels as though answer/response appears from nowhere” (77)
Feelings
“Whole body feeling” (113)
Gut reactions
“Feelings in my stomach” (10)
Sense
“Get a sense” (2)
Mental images
“Listen to that small voice in my head” (28)
Insight
“Make productive connections between previous unconnected or apparently
unrelated ideas” (105)
Negative signal
“I know something is wrong” (56)
Positive signal
“Something clicks inside that I recognize as clearly right” (5)
Anticipating
“Sense that someone is going to say something” (17)
Deciding
“Guides me towards concrete direction, decision or action” (20)
Judging
“Cannot rationalize an absolute decision so I make a casting vote based on
intuition” (38)
Questioning
“Ask myself what's really going on here” (50)
Processes
Intuition
Bodily Awareness
Cognitive Awareness
Enacting
Outcomes
Behaviours
What happens then you intuit?
One of contributions of this research is that we are able to arrive empirically at a
phenomenological, subjective experience-based definition of intuition. Further contributions
are as follows: (i) as noted above, previous research distinguishes between ‘intuiting’
(process) and ‘intuitive judgement’ (outcome) (Dane & Pratt, 2007), see Figure 2a, but we
identify three phases in the process (Figure 2b); (ii) we found that Human Resources
practitioners’ subjective experience of intuition has two facets: ‘bodily [somatic] awareness’
and ‘cognitive awareness’; (iii) This research bridges intuition’s antecedents and its
behavioural outcomes, and the subjective experience of intuition is at the mid-point of the
process (Figure 2b); (iv) our inductively-derived term ‘enacting’ subsumes Dane and Pratt’s
(2007) intuitive judgment and captures a wider range of potential outcomes.
Figure 2a. ‘Intuiting-intuitive judgement’ model (see Dane & Pratt, 2007)
Intuiting
•Intuition in its input
state: a non-conscious,
fast, holsitic processing
mode
Intuitive judgement
•Intuition in its outcome
state: an affectively
charged judgement
Figure 2b. ‘Intuiting-intuition-enacting’ model
Intuiting
• Rapid, automatic,
subconscious processing;
response to recognized
patterns, supported/enabled
by informational substrates
from past experiences/prior
learnings
Intuition
• Experienced as: (1) bodily
awareness: viscerally (‘gut
reactions’) and less
specific ‘feelings’; (2)
cognitive awareness:
general ‘sense’ and mental
images (visual, auditory)
Enacting
• Intuitions provide
positive/negative
evaluations and insights
enacted in approachversus-avoid behaviours,
decision making, problem
solving, and creativity
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What happens then you intuit?
Our model supports existing research; for example, the way intuition is interpreted in our
analysis is fully consistent with the view of ‘intuition-as-expertise’, ‘intuitive expertise’ and
‘expert intuition’ (Sadler-Smith & Shefy, 2004; Kahneman & Klein, 2009; Salas et al., 2010)
and Klein’s recognition-primed decision model, namely: ‘intuiting’ entails rapid, nonconscious processing based on past experiences and prior learnings.
In the recognition-primed decision (RPD) model (Klein, 1998; 2003; Klein, Calderwood &
Clinton-Cirocco, 1988) decision makers recognize salient cues (as one of our participants
wrote: “I recognize cues” [Participant 31]) and match these to extant patterns and prototypes
of similar situations or people (for example, “what’s likely to happen, what’s likely to work”
[Participant 48]). In the RPD model behavioural responses, in the form of ‘actions scripts’,
are executed on the basis of a matching process (Klein, 2003).
The process, as far as the intuitor is concerned, appears to be largely automatic involving
little in the way of effortful cognition (see Stanovich, 2009). Subjects “understand
instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning” (Participant 66), so much so that the
experience of intuiting provides evaluations arrived at with minimal conscious cognition (“it
is just right” [Participant 68]). Furthermore, the process is perceived to be fast.
Whether or not the intuitive response turns out to be effective will depend on the intuitor’s
situational awareness (Klein et al., 1988), her expertise (Ericsson, Prietula & Cokely, 2007)
and the validity of the decision making task or environment (i.e. how predictable the actual
outcomes are on the basis of the perceived cues, see: Kahneman & Klein, 2009).
Implications
Our research addresses a significant shortcoming in current theorizations by shedding light on
the nature and role of not just intuition but also, and specifically, ‘intuitive affect’ in Human
Resources practice.
Since intuition “operates at the nexus of thinking and feeling” (Hodgkinson et al.,2009: 278)
viewing cognitions and affect as distinct (e.g. Panksepp, 2003) is potentially unhelpful,
whereas conceiving the boundary as being more permeable opens the way to a potentially
richer conceptualization of the phenomenon of intuition.
Clore (1992) is helpful in this regard: he suggests that feelings can be grouped into three
categories: affective feelings: valenced subjective experiences encompassing moods and
emotions; bodily feelings: reflections of physical processes such as hunger or pain; cognitive
feelings: experiential states that accompany cognitive processes such as feelings of
familiarity (Clore, 1992; Greifeneder, Bless, & Pham, 2010).
The experiential state of ‘intuition’ was found to have two elements ‘bodily awareness’ (‘gut
feel’) and ‘cognitive awareness’ (‘hunch’); these can be mapped broadly on to Clore’s (1992)
distinction between bodily feelings and cognitive feelings (although this was not Clore’s
original intention). There is supporting evidence for this assertion since cognitive feelings
have been found to be related to intuition in that greater reliance on cognitive feelings is
associated with higher levels of faith in intuition (Keller & Bless, 2008). Cognitive feelings
may be one way in which the products of subconscious processes become registered,
articulated, and interpreted (Greifeneder, et al., 2010).
As noted in the Introduction, intuition research in management is characterized by a scarcity
of empirical work. Our research is one of a small handful of qualitative studies in this area
(e.g. Burke & Miller, 1999; Clarke & Mackaness, 2001; Sadler-Smith & Shefy, 2007). It has
several implications for intuition theory and hints at several new directions for intuition
research as follows:
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What happens then you intuit?
(1) The research sharpens and elaborates the definition of intuition, but in contrast with other
recent research it has done so directly from the perspective of data and experience rather than
indirectly from theory;
(2) Researchers have previously equated intuitions with ‘gut feelings’ (e.g. Burke & Miller,
1999; Hayashi, 2001) however our analysis shows this is insufficient. A more helpful
framing is a general category of ‘intuitive affect’ within which bodily feelings (referred to
colloquially as ‘gut feel’) and cognitive feelings (referred to colloquially as ‘hunch’ or ‘vibe’)
comprise two separate facets of the subjective experience of intuition;
(3) We expand Dane and Pratt’s (2007) ‘intuiting’ and ‘intuitive judgment’ distinction into
three elements, ‘intuiting’, ‘intuition’, and ‘enacting’ (Figure 2b) which offers a tentative
three-phase process model of intuition.
As far a future directions go, we need to know more about the detailed nature of intuitive
affect over-and-above mere attributions to ‘gut feelings’, and also explore whether different
feeling states arise under different conditions, the possibility of individual differences in the
subjective experience of intuition, individuals’ sensitivities to their bodily state (Dunn et al.,
2010), variability in the modalities in which intuition presents itself (Miller, 1992; Vaughan,
1979), and the neural correlates of the various facets of intuitive affect (Segalowitz, 2007)
Conclusion
This research has sought to get closer empirically to human resource practitioners’
experiences of intuition by applying a novel qualitative methodology based on denominalization. By interpreting what Human Resources’ practitioners wrote about their
experiences of intuition we have proposed a three phase model: intuiting, intuition, and
enacting.
Through replication and extension with different samples in different contexts, by developing
and elaborating the method and generating further research questions and hypotheses this
research could have important implications for how we understand the subjective experience
of a phenomenon which is seen increasingly as pivotal in Human Resources and
organizational practices more generally.
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