IANS
Apr 28, 2011

from IbnLive Website
 

You find yourself in the middle of a bunch of streets and buildings in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Giving the environment a quick once-over, you make a snap decision about whether you're safe or not. Chances are, that 'gut' call is the right one.

Binghamton University evolutionary biologists Dan O'Brien and David Sloan Wilson set out to test whether we do indeed have the capacity to judge urban neighborhood safety just by looking at physical structures, reports the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

They showed participants a selection of photos taken in unfamiliar neighborhoods and then asked them to rate what they thought the social quality in each of these environments might be, according to a Binghamton statement.

The responses were then compared to the results of a previous study O'Brien and Wilson had conducted in which participants were asked to rate their own neighborhoods on a similar scale. Interestingly enough, the ratings between the two study groups proved very similar.

If an outsider thought a neighborhood looked safe, people actually living were able to verify it.

The question remained, however, what cues in a neighborhood help an individual to come to these conclusions?

"Sociologists have long understood that signs of 'disorder' - loose garbage and broken windows - indicate a weak community that is vulnerable to criminal behavior," said O'Brien.

"And further investigation verified that participants were indeed equating unkempt lawns, peeling paint and unchecked litter with a lack of safety.

"We already know that most of us use available cues to judge people we've just met. Why not neighborhoods? The information is there, the question was just whether we pay attention to it or not."

It appears that we do, and O'Brien and Wilson have termed this ability "community perception".


 

'Gut Feeling' May Be Connected to Past Experience
by Alan Mozes

Psychological Science
2001

from Robertamittman Website

Have a hunch that something’s about to go terribly wrong?

It may just be paranoia. Or, researchers suggest, it may be an entirely accurate “gut feeling” based on subtle, unconscious comparisons with past events.

“The bottom line is that sometimes when people get a hunch, it’s not mysterious,” said study lead author Dr. Edward S. Katkin of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

 

“It’s because people are in a situation that has been associated with some event in the past - they might not consciously remember it but their guts do. And so they get a sense that something is going to happen.”

In their research, Katkin’s team tested whether or not gut feelings might accurately predict events, and which sensory cues worked to provoke such hunches.

Their study included 36 male and female undergraduate students aged 18 to 41. The researchers first measured each participant’s general sensitivity to stimuli by assessing their ability to accurately monitor their own heartbeat while simply sitting still.

Katkin’s group classified one third of the individuals to be good ‘heartbeat detectors,’ while the remaining two-thirds were judged to have poor sensitivity in that respect.

They then showed all the students films of spiders and snakes intercut with abstract images - moving too quickly for the students to consciously register what they saw. Upon a first viewing, small shocks were administered randomly following certain images. Upon a second viewing, students were asked to predict when the shocks would occur.

Katkin and his team report that those students who had been determined to have high sensitivity to sensory cues - the good heartbeat detectors - predicted the occurrence of shocks better than those who had poor sensitivity.

They conclude that even though none of the students could recognize any of the images they had seen, those with high sensitivity had absorbed the images subconsciously and linked them intuitively with their initial shock experience.

The study findings will be published in the September issue of Psychological Science.

Katkin told Reuters Health that while the association between accurate gut feelings and subconsciously registered stimuli may ultimately involve other additional influences, the connection appeared to be clear and substantial.

“We may consciously forget certain past experiences, but our bodies have a more lasting memory than our consciousness does and we respond to these experiences with these gut feelings,” he said.

 

“And there are individual differences in how sensitive people are, so that those who are more in tune with their bodies are more likely to have these gut feelings.”

However, Katkin cautioned that the findings should not be viewed as proof that all intuitions, feelings or hunches have solid foundations.

“There are lots of people who are having inaccurate hunches all the time, and I can’t address that,” he said. “I don’t know why they do.”