by The 2024 Academy Awards recognized some great acting performances, including Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of physicist Robert Oppenheimer, which won him the award for Best Actor. But what causes such peak performances? When an actor embodies the character so completely that he creates an immersive, enduring world of creation, we say that the actor was acting understandably.
Such performances are not limited to acting – we may see such intelligence in sports and music as well. But it is wider than that. Our behavior is intuitively something we all do. It’s kind of a situation where we’re just know what to do now – let us be the best versions of ourselves.
So how can we make sure we behave intuitively, when it matters most? And can we sustain this ability? Our latest research, published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, suggests that intuition can be trained and is best understood as an “embodied state of mind” supported by the cognitive abilities of to be aware of ourselves and our surroundings, and to be immersed in experience.
What is meant by an embodied state of mind? William James, generally acknowledged as the founder of modern psychology, proposed that there are two sides to consciousness, the “I” and the “I”. The active aspect of self-awareness is the “I” – this is the part of our consciousness that we experience now and again – sometimes called “the experiential self”. The most passive aspect of awareness is the “I” – this part that observes or reflects on our actions. We could call this the rational or reflective person.
This distinction has long been recognized in neurological research. For example, studies have shown that by taking psychedelic drugs and with surprise or surprise, a self-referential brain network that underlies reflective self-awareness can reduce activity in the default mode network.
Additionally, recent research has suggested that mindfulness meditation can help us move from reflective self-awareness to experiential self-awareness by training our attention.
Immersion with awareness
Our intelligence relies on many unconscious processes that support all of our cognition, perception and interaction with the world. It requires us to take in a lot of that, but also not to lose ourselves when overwhelmed by our senses. In other words, we need to maintain the right levels of awareness while immersed.
We perceive the world with our whole bodies, through all our senses – from sight to “thermeception” (sensing temperature) and “proprioception” (knowing which parts of your body are where not to look). This allows us to interact with the world around us in safe and useful ways. Ultimately, intuition happens when we are made aware of what happens in our body and what happens around us.
But intelligence cannot be fully explained when we are very aware of ourselves and our environment. When we engage our intuition, we are acting on what we feel. But it can be difficult to maintain our awareness if we become fully engaged in some specific task that uses intuition. That’s why another ability is needed: the immersion ability.
The ability to immerse or absorb means that you can remain fully immersed in a task through focused attention. This is very similar to what is called “flow”.
But if you were to become too immersed, wouldn’t you lose your awareness of yourself and your surroundings? This is why we recommend that you need meta-awareness: awareness of having the experience, rather than reflecting on the experience. In other words, you must be in an experimental state rather than a rational state; you are suffering, not reasoning.
Take for example acting. When we took part in a school play, we might have been fine representing Juliet, until we realized that everyone was looking right at us as we stumbled over the words. We then changed from experiential self-awareness – in which we embodied Juliet – to reflective self-awareness, where we thought (over)what we were doing. This type of “choking” during performance is really common in sports as well.
An actor acts intuitively when he/she enters a state of immersion while imagining, with full attention and awareness of the imagination, as well as full awareness of himself and the environment. They become fully immersed in the awareness of experience – they have experiential awareness.
But we cannot make the mistake of thinking that the method of acting is to sink one’s head so deeply that the actors are no longer themselves. They must maintain a meta-awareness of others to avoid mental health problems such as dissociation, and worse.
How to develop your intuition
If intuition is an embodied cognitive state rather than an ephemeral phenomenon that may occur by chance, does that mean it can be developed?
Achieving intuition is considered one of the aims of Konstantin Stanislavski’s approach to acting training (the basis of western mainstream acting). But even with this, intuition is often treated as something handed down from the muses, like a burst of creativity or insight.
Our research found, however, that intuition can be trained. To do that, we need to train the basic abilities: awareness of our inner and outer world, together with immersion.
As part of our research, we invited acting students to undertake intuition training, developed by co-investigator Micia de Wet. This included exercises focused on imagery and structured using guided meditations to train the actor’s attention and sensory awareness. The training also included exercises to encourage immersion in the world of stories through play and imaginative exploration. We found that this training enhanced the intelligence of the actors. Our survey of 310 actors also showed that the more they meditated on mindfulness, the higher their acting intelligence.
Although this training was specific to acting, we suggest that similar guided meditations, role-playing exercises and mindfulness training can boost our attention and focus. These may increase intelligence in other contexts, as these exercises sharpen basic general cognitive abilities of awareness and immersion, bringing awareness to the body and environment.
Rather than an esoteric phenomenon or a temporary moment of peak performance, intelligence is an important cognitive and emotional state supported by abilities that anyone can use continuously to engage with the world around them – and can, in their in addition, to develop.
This article from The Conversation is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Valerie van Mulukom does not work for, consult with, own shares or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and She has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.
