Abstract:
Intuition is by some conceived of as biased and by others as an important tool to make decisions in a
fast paced and uncertain world. Yet, within social interactions, intuitively judging is often the only
feasible option to interpret the content of our most important social signals, thus facilitating
attunement to social affordances. In fact, humans expertly extract and use face information in an
automatic and non-conscious fashion. Is intuition therefore a fundamental building block of the
toolbox we need to adapt to the various challenges of life as social beings? How does this fit the
notion of intuition as irrational and error-prone?
Among the most widely cited models of intuition that are engaging with these types of
questions within contemporary psychology, are dual process theories. However, as the first part of
this thesis will show, they do not suffice as general explanatory framework for intuition. With the
surfacing of more issues regarding general dual process models, the explanatory value of this dualistic
distinction diminishes. Rather than trying to ascertain in which way the supposed antagonists of
intuition and analysis interact with each other, a shift in focus has been proposed. I therefore join the
recent endeavor by a different stream of judgment and decision making researchers, to focus on
investigating functional characteristics of intuitive processes along different domains and dimensions.
The aim of this work is to investigate the cognitive processing characteristics and conditions
which enable the intuitive perception of and reaction to our most important objects of social
judgments. To achieve this, I draw on several empirical investigations, as well as theoretical
considerations. In contrast to current trends in face perception research, this puts the focus on the
cognitive processes that facilitate the integration of these percepts into social judgments.
The theoretical foundations of this thesis are two-fold. Firstly, the characterization of intuition
as a judgment and decision making process, which operates rapidly, automatically, without conscious
awareness of the decision maker and with the inclusion of some type of feeling as judgment signal.
Secondly, the context of face perception. Face perception is intuitive and essential for successful
social interactions. The processes enabling face perception are performed without conscious
awareness or interference and with a surprising swiftness, considering the amount of multi-attribute
information that needs to be integrated. The face perception context therefore provides a naturalistic
context for the study of every-day type intuitive judgments. It further provides the opportunity to
learn more about the cognitive processes that shape our social interactions.
This dissertation utilizes a multi-part research design. It is based on the conceptual analyses
of two popular notions of intuition in contemporary psychological research, namely the defaultinterventionist model and the notion of intuition as feeling based process, respectively. The key results
of these theoretical considerations are, firstly, that in several instances deliberation can actually lead
to more errors than intuitive processing, thus calling the generality of default-interventionist models
into question. Secondly, the close analysis of two investigations into visceral signals evoked during
intuitive judgments provides evidence that rather than a single ‘gut feeling’ playing a role in intuition,
the type of feelings elicited in intuitive judgments may depend on the task or the type of intuitive
process being engaged. It remains to be investigated, what types of feelings are constitutively linked
to intuition and when they are expected to enter the process.
The second part of the present thesis relies on empirical investigations of functional
characteristics of intuitive social judgments, utilizing the tracking of eye movements as process trace.
Intuition is -- by most definitions -- an implicit, internal, not consciously accessible process. More
specifically, intuitively gathered information is integrated into mental representations that are thought
to be constructed by a gradual, automatic, non-conscious process. Only the result of this process enters
awareness. This necessarily poses a great challenge for the study of the processing characteristics of
intuitive judgment behavior. One answer to this challenge is to focus on different dimensions of
operation which, can either be directly manipulated or investigated without needing to rely on the
subjective awareness of the decision maker. As Gustav Fechner famously proposed, subjective
experience is a physical process. Thus, measuring the physical properties of internal processes allows
for some measure of access to the otherwise inaccessible subjective experience. In this respect, eye
movement measures provide a physical basis for the study of internal processes.
If I focus on the forehead region of your face to determine whether you furrow your eyebrows
or crinkle your forehead, I am attending to a cue which allows me to gauge if you have understood
my argument or I lost you in confusion. Noting where a person looks thus allows for insight into the
locus of attention and thus the strategy used to extract meaning from the attended cue. Tracing eye
movement in task involving intuitive processes makes it possible to gain insight into the information
integration strategies supporting these strategies.
The key results of these investigations are that individuals employing an intuitive strategy to
judge faces rely on holistic information integration processes revealed by an attention map centralized
in the stimulus space. Furthermore, the reliance on an intuitive processing strategy to judge another
person depends on individual, internal factors, as well as external factors, such as the task domain.
Specifically, we find that individuals use similar cognitive processes to judge the gender identity of a
person, irrespective of their own sexual orientation. When it comes to judging the sexual orientation
of another person, however, the reliance on an intuitive processing strategy is moderated by the sexual
orientation of the perceiver.
While the general efficacy of intuition will most likely remain a topic of ongoing debate, the
social judgment domain offers a great opportunity for the characterization of intuitive processes in an
ecologically valid and motivationally relevant context. This dissertation provides further evidence for
the usefulness of intuitive processes in social judgments. Low-level visual perception of social cues
impacts impression formation and social evaluations. At the same time, the relationship between
visual perception and the social/cultural practices these visual processes are trained on is dynamic
and bi-directional. Elucidating the functional characteristics and contributions of intuitive processes
to the formation of these percepts is thus of fundamental importance. Not only for the furthering of
the theoretical debate on intuition, but also to understand the processes which determine social
evaluations. In the future, the thereby gained insights may become the building blocks for the
development of techniques to overcome the effects of negative social evaluations.
social judgments