Trusting your gut is more often than not the best way to go, according to a new study from Tel Aviv University’s School of Psychological Sciences. In the study, Professor Marius Usher and fellow researchers found human intuition is a surprisingly accurate means of decision making.

“The study demonstrates that humans have a remarkable ability to integrate value when they do so intuitively, pointing to the possibility that the brain has a system that specializes in averaging value,” Usher said. “This could be the operational system on which common decision-making processes are built.”

To assess his hypothesis, Usher used an experiment in which subjects where shown a quick succession of numbered pairs on a computer screen. All numbers on the right were considered one group, and all on the left were a separate group. Each group represented stock market returns. The numbers flashed across the screen at a speed of two and four pairs per second. Test participants were asked to choose which of the groups of numbers averaged the highest. Because the numbers had appeared on the screen too quickly for subjects to properly calculate the averages, participants had to determine the averages of the two groups based on “intuitive arithmetic.”

Usher discovered participants were able to correctly choose the group with the highest average remarkably well. They were not only able to calculate values with exceptional speed, but were also able to process a significant amount of data. Furthermore, Usher and his team noted, the study group’s accuracy actually increased with additional presented data. For example, if the group was presented six pairs of numbers, subjects chose the correct group 65 percent of the time. But when the data increased to 24 pairs of numbers, participants’ accuracy rate jumped to 90 percent.

“Intuitively, the human brain has the capacity to take in many pieces of information and decide on an overall value,” Usher said. “Gut reactions can be trusted to make a quality decision.”

Usher said he would like to follow the behavioral experiment with another that measures brain activity throughout the test. He believes doing so could shed additional light on the physiological aspects of value integration.

The study was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.