The phenomenology of truth: the psychological functions of the insight experience

Abstract

Nearly all waking moments are accompanied by an endless stream of thoughts and ideas passing rapidly through the mind (James, 1890). Many of these mental events can feel unproductive, arbitrary, or even distracting. But once in a while, an idea appears in the stream that is immediately imbued with a sense of profound importance and value. The central thesis of my work is that this phenomenologyepiphanies, insight experiences, and Eureka moments-serve an important function in human decision-making. I propose that the feelings associated with our ideas are like lights whose brightness guide the incognisant mind in choosing to trust only the best ideas; they help us to intuitively discriminate the diamonds from the rocks, so to speak. This functional view puts insight experiences into a broader context in human cognition than before. By evaluating insight experiences from a higher level of analysis, we are able to make and test novel predictions regarding the ways that spontaneous feelings of insight guide decisions in contexts of uncertainty.The thesis is divided into two parts. In Part 1-How to elicit and detect insight moments-Chapter 1 begins by testing a model of the neuro-cognitive processes commonly believed to elicit insight experiences, known as restructuring or representational change. I then evaluate the efficacy of existing methods for detecting insight experiences in controlled experiments. In the final Chapter of Part 1, I develop and test a novel visceral and embodied measure that captures metacognitions during problem solving as well as the sudden insight experience in real-time. In Part 2-Why we have insight experiences-I begin with a theoretical discussion of insight as a heuristic in contexts of uncertainty, where I propose that people rely on insight phenomenology in order to appraise new ideas. In a subsequent empirical Chapter, I describe three experiments that broadly test and affirm the predictions made by the Eureka Heuristic model of insight. The results of these experiments show that impulsive feelings of insight-and their intensity-predict the accuracy of responses in contexts of uncertainty, in both problem solving and sensory identification tasks. In the third experiment, I show that when participants are presented with a generalknowledge 'fact'-and an insight experience is artificially elicited at the same timethen the participants are more likely to believe that the claim is true.iii

The dark side of Eureka: Artificially induced Aha moments make facts feel true

“…There are important links to previous research and theory that warrant further investigation and discussion (for a more theoretical overview of the Eureka Heuristic model of insight, see , and Chapters 4 and 5 of Laukkonen, 2019). Future work will need to disentangle which features of the Aha!…”

“…experience will likely signal a correct solution. For a detailed theoretical discussion of our theory-termed the Eureka Heuristic-see Laukkonen, Schooler, andLaukkonen (2019).…”

Saúde emocional e pandemia: percepção docente e discente do curso de administração

“…Os modelos de competências socioemocionais enfatizam a autoconsciência e a regulação, a consciência social, as habilidades de comunicação, a empatia e a tomada de decisão responsável. Ademais, tais competências são cruciais para o bem-estar dos alunos e professores, bem como para sua capacidade aprimorada para lidar com condições complexas (LAUKKONEN;BIDDEL;GALLAGHER, 2019;CAO et al, 2020;SRIVASTAVA et al, 2021). Após compreender os aspectos da saúde emocional, a seção seguinte destina-se a apresentar o percurso metodológico.…”