Marta, S. & Nęcka, E. .
Jagiellonian University
The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between emotions and intuition. Intuition can be described as a feeling, knowledge or belief about own’s cognitive states, that is, a kind of metacognition that produces hunches, guesses and feelings. Several studies suggest that intuitive judgements are accurate and that they might be based on simple affective processes. A positive or negative affect can be the effect of progress monitoring and serve as a subtle cue about “being right”. In this experiment we examined the role of externally and subliminally implemented affect on intuitive feelings about approaching the solution of difficult problems (“feeling of warmth”). 130 students of Jagiellonian University were asked to solve two problems and give their feeling of warmth ratings every 15 s. They were also presented subliminally pictures of faces expressing emotions (negative, positive and neutral). The results suggest that it is possible to bias people’s intuitive feelings by external affective stimuli. That means that subtle affective changes might be the core of intuitive feelings.