English Version | I suspect, therefore I am

Precognitive sensations, mysterious hunches, and decisions made based on a feminine intuition that, I would discover, turned out to be right, can seem like inexplicable events. But, more or less believer, no one can deny that there is a sixth sense out there that helps us trust or distrust certain situations. I suspect this text will be good.

It was a little after 9pm on a Tuesday when I started writing this article. I was determined to stay in the office and finish it, especially because, outside, chaos reigned: it was the first day of post-summer storms, autumn making itself felt on the street unexpectedly and Lisbon residents discovering that it actually rains in the capital city, after all. Traffic not knowing how to deal with it. I took some things I had researched for this article and immediately realized that this sixth sense thingy had few certainties, but a lot to say. I soon felt that it was going to take longer than I expected and I moved my writing plan to the comfort of home. Feminine intuition? Far from it, just a deeply analytical understanding of the situation that was presented and the mental predictions of a journalist with a tendency to procrastinate. It's not exactly what we call a sixth sense, that feeling of inexplicable uncertainty that seems to come from the core. But maybe it's intertwined with it.

When we talk about feminine intuition as the sixth sense, we distinguish it from the other five commonly perceived and proven senses, such as vision, touch, smell, hearing and taste, because it is given a certain aura of mystery and transcendence that the others, biologically based, seem to lack. We talk about the sixth sense as if it were something paranormal, that extreme sensitivity to predict the future or identify strange stimuli in the environment, as if something didn't add up, and, even though we don't go around saying “I see dead people”, there is a side of us, when intuition strikes, that we feel as if we possessed a certain dose of sorcery. We think. Or we like to think. The thing about the sixth sense is perhaps much more analytical than we perceive: a 2008 study published in the British Journal of Psychology defined intuition as what happens when the brain relies on past experiences and external signals to make a decision – but it happens so quickly that the reaction occurs on an unconscious level. The process has little of magic, it is rather the result of sophisticated mental functioning that synthesizes information quickly. In other words, intuition is our brain's ability to take advantage of internal and external cues while making quick, immediate decisions. Often occurring subconsciously, intuition relies on our brain's ability to instantly assess the situation and make a decision based on instincts. This process is a byproduct of your ability to integrate large amounts of information quickly and efficiently, which then triggers biological reactions, such as the idea of ​​“fight or flight” manifested in physical discomfort, namely in the belly. “Just like the brain, there are neurotransmitters in the gut that can respond to environmental stimuli and emotions in the now – it’s not just about past experiences.” Dr. Judith Orloff, professor of psychiatry at UCLA and author of the book Guide to Intuitive Healing: Five Steps to Physical, Emotional and Sexual Well-Being, spoke about the topic with Webmd.com, in an article from last August. “When these neurotransmitters fire, you may feel butterflies or discomfort in your stomach. Researchers theorize that gut feeling plays a big role in intuition, sending signals to the brain,” she explains. The sixth sense will then be a kind of inner wisdom that responds to the environment in which we are located and makes a subconscious analysis of what surrounds us to make decisions about it. Perhaps the sixth sense is nothing more than the survival instinct adapted to the human and social being that we are: where animals perceive that a plant is poisonous, we identify red flags in relationships or a lack of trust in certain people. And vice versa: we can also develop instant empathy with someone for no reason other than their “positive energy”.

But if the sixth sense is something that assists humans in general, why attribute it to women as a rule? Talking about intuition is often associated with the 'Women's' word, but the functioning of these biological processes described above is transversal to both men and women, it should be noted. But there is a strong connotation with the female gender supported by both biological and sociological arguments. “Scientists believe that intuition operates through the right side of the brain, the brain's hippocampus, and the gut (the digestive system also has neurons),” explains Orloff, in a recent article for Psychology Today. “The ‘corpus callosum’ [structure of the brain located in the longitudinal fissure] of women, the connective white matter that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain, is thicker than that of men. This gives women better and faster abilities to access each hemisphere, further integrating their emotions and visceral feelings with the more logical decision-making functions of the left hemisphere. Women's brains are optimized for quick, intuitive decision-making. Women often tend to be psychologically more in touch with their emotions and are more likely to integrate emotional hunches and intuitions about people with the functions of logic”, says the MD. When comparing MRI scans of brain activity, the female brain reveals a greater number of neural connections. This makes you more efficient and helps you interpret the social environment. These neural pathways allow for greater communication between the two hemispheres of the brain, improving women's ability to process emotional information and connect it to rational thought. Again, this does not exclude men from possessing this innate human capacity: the male brain is neurologically programmed to be more logical, making it more effective at connecting perception with action. This helps men to be more intuitive in a different sense, particularly in areas like spatial awareness and problem solving. Men have their own areas of intuitive strength, even though women may excel at emotional and social intuition.

Women's tendency to have a more refined emotional intuition - we dare say, taking into account the issue's theme, even paranormal (even if it is a hyperbolized term) - has, thus, neurological foundation, further sharpened by biological factors, but also determined by social and historical ones. Science suggests that women's intuition is a product of (their) evolution. Females with a strong ability to understand and predict the needs of their offspring and partners thrive more than females with less developed senses, here also linking female intuition to maternal instinct and the need to protect the offspring. This ability likely evolved as a survival mechanism. Anthropological studies suggest that women who could sense danger or read subtle social cues were more likely to protect their children and ensure the continuity of their lineage. If you're a mother, you can definitely relate, or if you're not, perhaps you can find examples from your childhood, like me: I have this vivid memory of waking up at night, on multiple occasions, and silently going to my parents' room, and just stand by the bed without saying anything. Which seems a little creepy, but maybe that's why it didn't take a second for my mother to open her eyes with a startle. My father would continue snoring, as memory dictates. Female intuition seems to be closely linked to the maternal instinct, but it doesn't mean that you need to be a mother to have it, the belief is it's embedded in our DNA, just perhaps more dormant if you don't have children to protect and care for, time in which they are operated at their maximum capacity.

On the other hand, the role of women in society over time has also influenced this somewhat mystical power of being able to predict what is invisible to the other five senses (supposedly). In many societies of the past (and still today), women were often expected to be seen but not heard, placing them in a secondary place, a position of weakness and, as a result, often a dangerous one. This cultural conditioning has led women to develop a high sense of observation, becoming hypersensitive to the feelings and non-verbal signals of others. This ability to observe and intuit has been passed down through generations, making it a powerful tool for understanding complex social dynamics. Today, it can be proven in various professional and personal scenarios, where women often excel at mediating conflicts and understanding emotional tendencies. Women can demonstrate more empathy, collaboration, self-control and concern, intuitive skills that make them competent leaders, capable of making quick but considered decisions by balancing logical analysis with empathy - a combination of qualities, i.e. emotional intelligence, increasingly recognized as essential in today's leadership contexts. This capacity for internal intuition also manifests itself externally: we are better at showing our emotions through facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, contrasting with the fact that men tend to be better at hiding their emotions and maintaining their impassiveness. This dichotomy also arises from the social roles of both: women have always been encouraged to care and perceive, and men to conceal emotions, always being the untouchable and firm pillars. Still, the opposite sex can decode this male poker face through this or that stimulus: women's sharp intuitive abilities allow them to decode these subtle, often unconscious signals. Studies on nonverbal communication skills show that women are better at reading facial expressions and emotions and, consequently, are more likely to pick up on others' subconscious signals. The University of Cambridge conducted an experiment where they showed people pictures of eyes, asking respondents to infer the person's mood based on the appearance of the eyes in the image - women ruled in the results.

Does this show that women's sixth sense is scientifically proven? Maybe not, but we cannot deny that there are arguments to support it, even if only through the empirical confirmation that life has given us, showing it to be true: that colleague with whom you immediately hit it off and became a friend for life or that acquaintance who had a negative energy and who later you ended up discovering they were a bad seed are stories that we tell to others and to ourselves, claiming a mysterious nature in the way we “met” them right away. Even though the sixth sense may just be a consequence of the five other ones to which learning from the history of personal experiences is added, this does not make it any less real, it just deconstructs the process behind its manifestation. It is curious that the definition of “intuition” is also intuitive – scientists have tried to find a precise definition for the phenomenon, but everyone knows what it means to have a feeling, even without some standardization of the term, and without extensive scientific corroboration. The truth is that sometimes there are things that don't sound good to us - with ourselves, with other people, with the environment, with a situation - and it's always good to pay attention to this gut feeling (without falling into exaggerations). We may not know how to explain why we feel this or that at a given moment, but it was probably just intuition meeting with the five senses in an emergency call to consult past memories and similar experiences and issue a memo to proceed with caution. Trust, to keep existing.

Translated from the original in Vogues Portugal’s “The Mystery Issue” Issue, published October 2024. Full stories and credits in the print issue.