Intuition is pattern recognition
The more experience a person has in a particular domain, the greater their potential for intuitively making good decisions. Herbert Simon, a scholar in the field of decision making, summarizes this process:
The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.[1]
Kahneman notes that the moral of Simon’s remark “is that the mystery of knowing without knowing is not a distinctive feature of intuition; it is the norm of mental life.”[^2]
See also:
- Pattern recognition primes decision-making
- Wicked learning environments prevent learning
- Solutions to complex problems are based on pattern recognition
Thinking, Fast and Slow – Kahneman (2013), ch. 22 § “Intuition as Recognition.” ↩︎