Do you think with your head or your heart?Denise Chan/Alamy
Here’s a simple task that might help you to understand your mind a little better. Place your finger on part of your body that best represents the location of the “self”. Don’t overthink it; there is no right or wrong answer. Simply tune into the feeling of where the essence of “you”, the very core of your being, resides.
If you are like most people, you will point to either your head or your heart. As absurd as it may seem, a host of research suggests that your answer reflects your thinking style – whether you are being driven by logic and analysis, or intuition and emotion. And learning to shift between the two modes of being – and to do so at will – may have some surprising benefits for your decision-making.
The idea that we may be led by our heads or our hearts is, of course, highly prevalent in popular culture: the metaphor has become something of a cliché. It was only in 2013, however, that the researchers Adam Fetterman, now at the University of Houston in Texas, and Michael D Robinson at North Dakota State University decided to test whether our perceptions are more than mere figures of speech, with real consequences for our behaviour.
