Research participants who strongly trusted their feelings were able to predict future levels of the Dow Jones average with 25% greater accuracy than people who didn’t, says a team led by Michel Tuan Pham of Columbia Business School. In another experiment, 41% of people who trusted their feelings were able to correctly pick an American Idol winner, compared with just 24% of people with little trust in their feelings.
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Relying on a gut sense allows people to tap into the brain’s unconscious syntheses of knowledge from many sources, the researchers say.