UNLOCK Your Brain’s Potential: Build REAL Intuition & Make Better Decisions | Joel Pearson

Summary

Neuroscientist Joel Pearson presents intuition as the brain’s practical use of information and learned associations that are not currently in conscious awareness. In his account, intuition is neither mystical knowledge nor an infallible inner guide. It can improve decisions when it draws on relevant experience, but it can also be distorted by emotion, impulse, addiction, poor risk judgment, or a change in context.

How intuition is studied

Pearson’s lab developed a way to study intuition using unconscious emotional information:

• Images are shown to one eye while bright, flashing colors are shown to the other, suppressing the image from conscious awareness.
• Although participants report not seeing the image, the brain and body can still respond to its emotional content. For example, a threatening image may increase sweating.
• Participants make simple decisions while this information is presented. Across repeated trials, their decisions can become faster and more accurate, and their confidence can rise.
• Researchers measure physiological responses, including changes in skin conductance, and use methods such as EEG to track fast processes.

Pearson describes this as a way to operationalize intuition: the productive use of unconscious information to guide decisions and actions. He argues that conscious and unconscious signals are continually combined in everyday behavior.

Body, learning, and intuition

The body can respond to information that a person does not consciously recognize. Pearson uses the example of entering a café: past experience may have taught someone to associate subtle environmental cues with good or bad food or service, producing a felt sense of approval or unease.

This internal bodily perception is called interoception. The response is not necessarily a message from the gut itself; it may reflect physiological changes caused by the brain’s unconscious processing.

Intuition depends on learning. A novice cannot intuitively play chess without acquiring relevant experience and associations. However, expertise is often context-specific: skills learned in one setting may not transfer reliably to another. Pearson also distinguishes intuition from instinct: instincts are relatively innate and stable, while intuition changes with learning and environment.

The SMILE framework

Pearson’s framework identifies conditions to consider before relying on intuition:

• S — Self-awareness: Notice your emotional state and ask whether a feeling is being driven by stress, anxiety, depression, excitement, or another strong emotion. Pearson’s general advice is to return to a more neutral baseline before trusting an intuitive judgment.
• M — Mastery: Check whether you have enough relevant experience in the particular area. Expertise in one domain does not guarantee good intuition in another.
• I — Impulse: Distinguish intuition from compulsive urges, addiction, or other impulsive behavior.
• L — Low probability: Be cautious about intuitive reactions to rare risks. People often misjudge probability—for example, by overestimating the danger of a shark attack.
• E — Environment: Consider whether the context has changed. Learning and judgment formed at work, for example, may not transfer perfectly to working at home.

Pearson recommends practising with small, low-stakes decisions. Record what you felt, what you chose, and what happened, then review the results over time. This can help people assess how reliable their intuition is in specific situations.

Mental imagery and aphantasia

The discussion covers aphantasia, the absence or marked reduction of voluntary mental imagery, and hyperphantasia, unusually vivid imagery. Pearson says these occur along a spectrum and that people may not realize their imagery differs from other people’s.

The studies and observations he describes suggest that mental images can intensify emotional reactions:

• In experiments involving distressing material, participants with aphantasia reportedly experienced fewer visual flashbacks, and their recollections were less visual.
• In a frightening-story experiment, skin-conductance responses rose more strongly among people who formed mental images than among people with aphantasia.
• Pearson says preliminary, unpublished work found differences in empathy scores, and that researchers are investigating possible differences in responses to risk.

He also notes that strong imagery has been associated with PTSD, anxiety, schizophrenia, and visual hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease. These are associations, not proof that vivid imagery causes these conditions. Pearson cautions that attempts to induce imagery—including through psychedelics—could have unwanted effects; the role of such interventions and their risks remain uncertain.

Creativity, consciousness, and uncertainty

Pearson says there is no widely accepted, reliable way to measure creativity. A common test asks people to generate unusual uses for an object, but he questions whether this fully captures creativity. He distinguishes creativity, visualization, and mental imagery while acknowledging that they overlap. He also describes flow as a state in which self-awareness and the usual sense of time may recede, while noting that its relationship to creativity needs more research.

The conversation also considers the body–brain relationship, including how heart activity and breathing may affect cognition. Pearson emphasizes that consciousness remains poorly understood, including whether an objective test could establish that another person—or an AI system—is conscious. He treats ideas such as panpsychism and other unusual claims as open questions, not established findings.

Pearson describes uncertainty as an aversive response seen across humans and other animals, likely rooted in evolution. In modern settings, persistent uncertainty may become maladaptive. He suggests understanding the biological response, reframing uncertainty where possible, and using strategies that reduce anxiety.

The discussion warns that synthetic media and deepfakes may have a lasting influence even after viewers are told that content is fake. Pearson argues that labeling alone may not undo the effect, and calls for more psychological research and practical ways to help people manage AI-related uncertainty and misinformation.

Pearson also says there is no convincing evidence, in his view, that free will exists. This is presented as his position in a philosophical debate, not as a settled scientific finding.

Research approach

Pearson describes agile science as a process for exploring new questions:

1. Develop a small, low-cost pilot experiment.
2. Test it quickly, sometimes first on oneself or a small number of participants.
3. Iterate and refine the method based on what works and what fails.
4. Scale up only after the approach has been improved.

He argues that this can reduce the time and resources spent on poorly designed studies, especially in less-established research areas.

Researchers and sources mentioned

• Joel Pearson — cognitive neuroscientist and author of The Intuition Toolkit.
• Rich Roll — host of the interview.
• Ed Catmull — discussed in connection with Pixar and aphantasia.
• Steve Jobs — cited as an example of expertise and intuition not necessarily transferring across domains.
• Christopher Nolan and Leonardo DiCaprio — referenced in an analogy for unconsciously presenting information to the brain.
• Malcolm Gladwell — mentioned in a discussion of the “10,000 hours” idea.
• Tom Shadyac — and his documentary I Am.
• Alex Garland and Nick Offerman — associated with the series Devs, discussed in relation to prediction and free will.
• Google DeepMind — cited in connection with AI and protein-folding research.
• Neuralink — discussed as a brain–computer interface effort.
• Works and concepts referenced: The Intuition Toolkit, I Am, Devs, Jaws, and The X-Files.

The conversation did not name specific scientific papers or identify the researchers behind several of the studies described.