Have you ever felt butterflies in your stomach before a big speech? Or a wave of calm after a deep breath? These are examples of interoceptive cues—physical signals from inside your body that influence how you feel and may also influence the choices you make.
But when confronted with a difficult decision, should we trust our gut instincts, or are there times when it’s wiser to set these signals aside? The answer is nuanced and may depend on who you ask and how you feel, as well as your ability to accurately sense your body’s signals.
What is interoception?
Often called the “hidden” sense, interoception refers to the processing of signals that come from inside your body—for example, feeling your heart beating, your breathing, or knowing when you are hungry or thirsty. It will come as no surprise that these signals provide important cues for maintaining balance in your body—for example, prompting you to grab a drink when you feel thirsty—however, they also form the basis of emotional experience. In fact, almost every theory of emotion suggests that the perception of bodily signals plays a role in emotional experience, though how we interpret these signals considering the context is important: The butterflies you feel in your stomach could be interpreted as nervousness if you’re about to give a speech or excitement if you’re about to go on a first date.
Take a moment to close your eyes and sit still. Can you feel your heartbeat?
You might not feel anything at all, or maybe you sense your heartbeat very clearly. Sometimes, you might think you feel it when you don’t or be unable to consciously perceive it when in fact you can. In laboratory tests, people differ greatly in how accurately they can perceive their bodily sensations and how aware they are of their own sensitivity. These individual differences in interoceptive ability may impact how we process emotions and make decisions.
Can interoception influence decision-making?
You’ve likely heard the phrase “Trust your gut,” and research suggests there may be some truth to it. Evidence suggests that bodily signals—especially our heartbeat signals—may influence our decisions, particularly when risk is involved. In the early 1990s, Antonio Damasio and colleagues introduced the “somatic marker hypothesis.” This idea proposes that physiological signals or “somatic markers” may guide our decisions in uncertain situations (Damasio et al., 1991).
To test this hypothesis, Damasio and colleagues used the Iowa Gambling Task (Bechara et al., 1997). In this task, participants chose a card from four decks: Decks A and B offer higher rewards but carry greater risks, while Decks C and D provide smaller rewards with lower risks. They found that participants showed anticipatory skin responses—changes in physiological markers like sweat response—when faced with risky decisions that seemingly guided them away from poor choices, even before they could verbally explain why.
Later studies suggested that individual differences in physiological arousal, such as a heightened heart rate, are linked to levels of loss aversion (Sokol-Hessner and colleagues, 2009). This suggests that people who experience stronger physical responses when facing potential losses tend to be more loss-averse, meaning they are more likely to avoid risky choices that could lead to negative outcomes. The same research team later observed that individuals who were better able to discriminate tones presented when most people perceive tones to be synchronous with their heartbeat, rather than delayed, were more likely to exhibit loss aversion. This suggests that our ability to sense bodily cues might enhance the impact of physiological arousal on our tendency to avoid losses (Sokol-Hessner et al., 2014).
More recent work further suggests a link between interoception and decision-making in real-world, high-stakes situations. Financial traders who were better able to count their heartbeats (without feeling for their pulse) tended to make more profitable decisions, with their heartbeat-counting performance predicting how long they survived in the financial markets (Kandasamy and colleagues, 2016).
Together these results suggest a potential role for interoception in decision-making.
Is it always best to follow our heart?
While the idea of “following your heart” sounds appealing, it may not aid everyone in decision-making—especially those who tend to overreact to bodily signals. Research suggests that in individuals with panic disorder, the ability to count heartbeats relates to poorer performance on the Iowa Gambling Task, the opposite pattern to that seen in controls and in financial traders as discussed above (Wölk et al., 2014). Panic disorder often involves misinterpreting normal bodily sensations, like a slightly raised heart rate, as something to be worried about. This can lead to avoiding activities that might increase heart rate, such as exercise or caffeine. Taken together, these results suggest that for some individuals—for example, those with panic disorder—being better able to perceive bodily sensations like heartbeats may actually impair risky decision-making.
In addition to differences between individuals, internal body signals may only influence certain types of decisions—particularly those involving high risk. Indeed, research suggests that individuals who report being more attuned to interoceptive signals tend to be more risk-averse when facing high-stakes choices, but these interoceptive differences are not linked to low-risk decisions (Salvato et al., 2019). This suggests that while interoceptive differences may relate to risky decisions, we may rely more on rational thinking for everyday choices.
Decision-Making Essential Reads
So, should you follow your heart?
While “trusting your gut” may sound appealing, many factors shape our decisions beyond just bodily cues, or “somatic markers.” Not all physiological responses reliably guide us, and, sometimes, our bodily signals may even mislead our judgment, particularly if we are prone to overanalysing bodily signals or experience intense emotional reactions to interoceptive cues. Although research suggests interoception may play a role in risky decision-making, measuring these individual differences is challenging, and there’s still debate about what these measures truly capture.
With the jury still out, the next time you face a big decision, consider listening to your heart—but don’t hesitate to go against your gut if reason leads you elsewhere.
Jennifer Murphy is a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey. Ren Palmer is a Ph.D. student in the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey investigating interoception, supervised by Dr. Murphy.
