Our view of the world and who we are as people has changed over time. One example is that the ancient Egyptians thought the heart was the organ that created the intellect. They thought the only purpose of the brain was to cool the blood. They would preserve the heart and place it in an urn next to a mummy, while the brain got tossed out as a worthless organ. The Egyptian’s belief in the heart being the source of our thoughts is how we got the expression “learning by heart.” Now we know that the brain is the source of all our thoughts, emotions, and sensations and that it also has critical life sustaining functions. Scientists, however, are now suggesting that we might have a kind of second brain, that of the Stomache.

So, why would the stomache be elevated to such an important status? Isn’t its role just to digest our food and disperse nutrients to other parts of the body? Well, it has to do with how we experience anxiety. The stomache has lots or nerve connections that become activated when we become aroused. This accounts for the feeling of butterflies in our stomaches when we are nervous. It also accounts for why we say we have a Gut Feeling about something when we are making a decision.

A decision in which you don’t have full information or are unsure about the outcome is by definition a risky decision. The element of risk can range from something very trivial to even a matter of life or death. The way we make a decision when we have incomplete information is to base the possible outcome on probabilities of success vs. failure (or cost vs. benefit). If we were totally rational beings we could make our decisions based strictly on weighing different outcomes. We often seek out information to help us make Difficult Decisions. The sources of information can be other people, books, the internet, etc. Another source many people rely on when making difficult decisions is their intuition or gut feeling.

The feelings we have when we make difficult decisions inform us as to whether we are taking the correct course of action. If we feel good about something, we will probably go ahead with the action. If we don’t feel good about it, then we will probably refrain from doing whatever we are contemplating. The feeling in our gut is why the stomache is now sometimes referred to as the “second brain.” The visceral feedback we get from the stomache is an extension of the mental state we are in at a given time.

So, this is all well and good but it should be pointed out that our intuitions are not always correct. We can be prone to something called the confirmation bias. This occurs if we only pay attention to the times our gut feeling was correct and ignore the times it wasn’t. Making decisions without complete information is something most of us would like to avoid. All we can do is to discuss the problem with people we trust and try to gather as much information as possible. After that, we have to take the plunge. Our gut might be telling us that we are taking the right course of action, or it just might be reflecting our uneasiness about making a risky decision.