Recent research, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, hints that people who follow their gut feelings might be less likely to act immorally.

Share on Pinterest A new study predicts that people who follow their instinct are less likely to cheat.

Sarah Ward, psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri, conducted a two-pronged study investigating how people who follow their instincts behave in morally charged situations.

Acting on instinct, as an area of psychological research, has seen relatively little study.

This is partly due to its nebulous nature and the difficulty of pinning down “gut feelings” in an experimental setting.

A new study aims to add some detail to this unmarked territory.

In psychology, gut instinct – or intuition – is defined as the ability to understand something immediately without having to engage conscious reasoning.

To a certain extent, we all allow our instincts to guide us. Most people can remember a time when they were driving a car, lost in thought, and arrived at their destination with virtually no recollection of the journey.

That gives us some idea of the amount of processing and control our brain can have without involving conscious thought.

However, how intuition affects us in more complicated, moral territory is not well understood, but following instinct is considered a valuable psychological mechanism. Chartered psychologist Dr. Joan Harvey, of Newcastle University, says the following:

“Whilst we can seek to make the most rational decisions, in reality most of us combine cognition and affect, meaning that we use both our emotions and the information in front of us to help us decide what to do.”

Back through the mists of time, early humans would have needed to rely on instinct. Acting quickly and decisively, without having all of the facts, would have been essential for survival.

Following our gut is a trait that served us well in the wild, but how it impacts us today in our infinitely more complex and morally confusing society is much trickier to establish.