intuition

Meaning: Intuition is a quick, automatic judgment, a "gut feeling," reached without conscious step-by-step reasoning. In dual-process accounts it belongs to the fast, effortless mode of thought (often called System 1), in contrast to slow, deliberate analysis (System 2) or an algorithm that works through every step. Intuition draws on experience and heuristics, so it can be accurate in familiar settings but is more open to bias.

On the MCAT: A passage shows someone deciding fast with little deliberation, such as an expert sensing the right move, and you classify it as intuitive or analytical, or predict when it fails. Expect links to heuristics (availability, representativeness), anchoring, and overconfidence. Intuition tends to be more reliable with expertise and familiar problems, and less reliable with novel or statistical ones.

Common confusion: Intuition is not the same as a heuristic, and it is not random guessing. A heuristic is a specific mental shortcut; intuition is the fast, unreasoned feeling of knowing, which heuristics or expertise can produce. It is not automatically wrong; it simply has not been checked by deliberate reasoning.