PERCEPTIVENESS, INTUITION AND HUNCHES

From a technical point of view, whenever we call someone ‘perceptive’ or
‘intuitive’, we are referring to his or her ability to read another person’s non-verbal cues
and to compare these cues with verbal signals. In other words, when we say that we
have a ‘hunch’ or ‘gut feeling’ that someone has told us a lie, we really mean that their
body language and their spoken words do not agree. This is also what speakers call
audience awareness, or relating to a group. For example, if the audience were sitting
back in their seats with chins down and arms crossed on their chest, a ‘perceptive’
speaker would get a hunch or feeling that his delivery was not going across. He would
become aware that he needed to take a different approach to gain audience involvement.
Likewise, a speaker who was not ‘perceptive’ would blunder on regardless.
Women are generally more perceptive than men, and this fact has given rise to what
is commonly referred to as ‘women’s intuition’. Women have an innate ability to pick
up and decipher non-verbal signals, as well as having an accurate eye for small details.
This is why few husbands can lie to their wives and get away with it and why,
conversely, most women can pull the wool over a man’s eyes without his realising it.
This female intuition is particularly evident in women who have brought up young
children. For the first few years, the mother relies solely on the non-verbal channel to
communicate with the child and this is believed to be the reason why women often
become more perceptive negotiators than men.