Importance Of Instinctive Judgement

Instinctive judgement is crucial to our survival. Our sense perception allow us to explore and gather observations from the world around us. Yet, this also threatens to overwhelm us, as our brain cannot denote equal importance and attention to every single piece of information. The brain taps into our previous experiences and preconceptions, and identifies the consequential pieces of information, directing our attention to them, and discarding the rest. This instinctive and rapid process helps us stay focus on and respond to the task on hand - whether it is driving, working, or just simply surviving. Yet, we know that these instinctive judgements, which are created by our assumptions and experience, are prone to be biased. If so, how can we

But do these devices actually act as a checks to the information gained by our instinctive judgements? This is what I shall explore in this essay. To communicate our judgements and observations, must use language as a medium. Language can come in many forms - verbal and nonverbal, represented in words, objects, or images, and continue subtleties such as tone, gesture, and symbolism. What is essential, however, is that both the sender and receiver are able to understand the words, the non-verbal cues, and references made. When this fails, inaccuracies in knowledge occur. In most languages, connotations of words plays a powerful role in manipulating meaning. We are all familiar with how writers choose specific words to describe and create imagery for the reader, and how they allow us to escape into a world where

They are, to a large extent, determined by the context of the stimuli, one’s experiences, and one’s culture. Often times we seem to believe that emotion is a threat to knowledge and rational decision making - our impulses can cause us to make irrational decisions, the inflamed language of politicians and advertisers can manipulate the public’s perception, while trauma and fear can cause indecision and inaction. Some studies in cognitive psychology do indeed find emotions as a threat to knowledge. This can be seen in the theory of flashbulb memory, which states that during a dramatic and emotional event, such as a national tragedy or a natural disaster, we form highly vivid snapshots; people tend to have “very clear memories of where they were, what they did, and what they felt when they first learned about [the event]” (Crane 91). While these memories are characterized by seemingly being “[enhanced in] vividness and confidence” (Talarico 460), they are in truth equally prone to the same decay, inaccuracies, and the influence of post-event information as normal memories. It is also found that the more intense the emotion felt by the person, the more confident he is in his memory. In this case, emotions does not just fail to check our initial judgements and feelings, they actually encourages us to retain and believe in the inaccurate