Sydney, Nov 13: Scientists are on the brink of explaining the role of intuition in our decision-making.

According to Dr David Haynes, a senior psychology lecturer at the University of South Australia, the world is made up of two types of people: those who make decisions based on intuition and those who make them based on fact.

"In my experience that is the biggest divider of people, even more than the extroversion or introversion divider, " the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Dr Haynes, as saying.

This division also forms a key part of one of the world's most popular personality tests, the Myers-Briggs, he added.

Carl Jung was the first psychologist to bring in intuition into the dominion of psychology in the early 1930s. But scientific research in this area has still left many questions unanswered about what intuition is and which part of our brain it comes from.

Professor Con Stough, director at Swinburne University of Technology's Brain Sciences Institute, has done research into the role intuition plays in the decision-making of top female executives, and found that intuitive people make decisions faster and effectively because they are more easily able to call on their past experiences and emotions.

"We found that the more effective female executives had higher intuition. What we find in ineffective leaders are people who are very analytical and don't incorporate any emotion or intuition in their decision-making, ” Stough said.

"Emotions orient people quickly to the right decision and when people only make analytical decisions, they are having to reinvent the wheel every single time, ” he added.

He further said that everyone has intuition and it is not a matter of developing intuitive skills but simply being open to them.

"A lot of people are closed to allowing intuition to affect them or allowing intuition to be a valued piece of information in the decision-making process, " he said.

"If you don't use any intuition at all, you become like a computer - only making a decision with factual information and that factual information might not come in for a long time. Intuition allows you to make much quicker decisions and rely on your gut feelings and what you've learned previously, ” he added.

Australian psychic and author Paul Fenton-Smith, head of the Academy of Psychic Sciences added: "Intuition is an inner knowing. It is a part of you that knows things that isn't always in touch with a logical part of you. The high self part of you understands and knows whether things will work or not. Intuition is access to the higher self and getting the information you need to, " he said.

"The simplest way is to still your mind and then listen to that small voice within, ” he said.

"Good decision making is a combination of intuition and logic, " he said.

In research scheduled for publication before the end of the year, a team of well-known psychology scholars have identified intuition as having the potential to merge lines of inquiry spanning cognitive, social, educational and organisational psychology.

The scholars, from the University of Leeds and the University of Surrey in Britain, and Swinburne, draw attention to intuition as a scientific concept that has developed over the ages. (ANI)