Sometimes gut feelings can be explained by our evolved instincts that are encoded in our DNA, which exist because they helped our ancestors survive in the world as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago.

In many cases our intuition is associated with our immediate emotional responses to stimuli.

 Sometimes our “intuition” is based on repeated experience that we access automatically.

Societal conditioning can create a kind of gut reaction that operates without conscious awareness. If we are told enough times when we were young not to trust strangers, then we may feel immediately distrustful when a stranger strikes up a conversation. The trouble with responses of this kind is that they are often formed without thought or careful reflection.

 Our brains are capable of forming very strong associations and this can lead to what might be interpreted as “gut feelings”.

Many people also use the phrase to mean something extra-sensory entirely. Or rather, they think “intuition” is actually like a sixth sense, giving them information that can’t be traced back to the other five senses. An example: the feeling that something bad/good is going to happen, without any concrete justification.

It’s also worth mentioning that widespread faith in intuition may partly be due to selective memory (i.e., remembering the times when you had a hunch about something and it happened to be true, and forgetting/not noticing the times when your hunch didn’t pan out).