CIRCULARES Y PUBLICACIONES

A heuristic is a psychological term to describe a cognitive ‘shortcut’ employed by humans in circumstances where information is limited or where time pressures necessitate a quick decision (Marewski et al, 2010). Heuristic strategies are allied to intuitive thinking (Helm, 2011) which is automatic, unconscious, seeking broad ‘patterns in the data’ (Munro, 2008) rather than detail. This contrasts analytic modes of thinking which involve ‘deliberate, conscious’ (Helm, 2011: 897) processes of reasoning. Intuition is a quasi-rational process, characterised as ‘unconscious’ and ‘emotion-laden’ (Munro, 2008: 04). In situations where time is limited and where there is uncertainty, the use of heuristic or intuitive strategies represent an adaptive strategy (Marewski et al, 2010), for as Gigerenzer (2007: 228) suggests, intuitive thinking often ‘enables us to act fast and with outstanding accuracy’. van Luitgaarden (2009, 248) argues that many social work tasks are placed ‘closer to the intuitive pole of the cognitive continuum than to the analytical pole. Similarly, Saltiel (2015:3) suggests that ‘the nature of social work practice favours quick heuristic, or intuitive, forms of decision-making rather than more deliberative, analytical processes’. For instance, during an initial home visit, the worker is effectively bombarded with information of different types, including ‘verbal, emotional and sensory data’ (Helm, 2011: 898). The ‘data’ may include facial expressions, body language or the behaviours of the child or parent during the visit. Sensory data for the worker may include the smell, sight and visceral experience of being within the home environment. In this type of situation, the slow deliberate and logical process of analytic thinking would not help the social worker to think quickly and respond effectively. As Helm (2011) suggests, the situation would favour an intuitive mode of reasoning (Helm, 2011) with the worker making sense of broad patterns, and getting a ‘feel’ for the case.

Intuitive reasoning may be associated with proficiency on the part of the social worker. Taylor (2013: 66) suggests ‘as knowledge and skills become increasingly internalised with experience, decisions may become less conscious and might be described as more intuitive’. For instance, the ability to recognise patterns is an important skill for the professional social worker, particularly in identifying abuse (Taylor, 2013). Workers’ sensitivity to such patterns may become proficient given repeated experiences of working with families over the course of their career. Intuitive reasoning may therefore have much in common with the concept of

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practice wisdom, which ‘involves an inductive process whereby practitioners draw usually implicit generalizations from their practice (Scott, 1998: 74).

Fagan’s (1998: 34) study of child safeguarding work among accident and emergency nurses found that nurses with more than five years’ experience perceived ‘experience, instinct and intuition’ as the most important skills enabling them to identify the signs of abuse. Experienced practitioners felt that ‘gut feeling’ was an important way in which they were alerted to abuse. Rather than viewing intuition as ‘woolly’ thinking, we might suggest that repeated experience of situations possessed by the experienced practitioner may allow them to have developed efficient heuristic devices, enabling them to become better at recognising patterns. In support of this idea, Regehr et al (2010: 626) found that workers themselves attributed their confidence in terms of risk assessment to ‘training, past supervisions and experience’.

However, while the use of heuristics and intuitive reasoning may represent an adaptive and useful mode of thinking in certain situations, it can lead to cognitive bias or error (Marewski, 2010, Helm, 2011) and even when apparently accurate, intuitive reasoning is notoriously difficult to articulate. Regehr et al (2010: 626) found that while social workers might have a strong intuition or sense of risk in relation to a case, they often felt that they didn’t have ‘sufficient information’ to support their intuition. Similarly, Collins and Daly (2014: 15) note that workers in their study ‘found it very difficult to articulate the decision-making process and seem to have limited explicit awareness of how they arrived at a judgement or conclusion.’ However, rather than evidence of poor or flawed reasoning, this might be regarded as a result of the difficulties inherent in fully articulating how one’s prior practice experience, personal background, observation of body-language and tone of voice etc. have led one to a particular opinion. As Munro observes (2008) ‘intuitions’ require cognitive effort and dialogue with others to be translated into defensible analytic judgements.

Workers’ reliance on intuitive thinking is likely to predominate in situations which are fast- paced, characterised by multiple social cues and uncertainty. Collins and Daly (2011: 22) found that where social workers’ ‘observational evidence was limited for any reason’ they tended to fill the gaps with reference to previously observed patterns of behaviour from other cases. Given time-constraints for reaching a professional judgement and incomplete evidence, social workers were identified as being ‘more likely’ to use intuitive reasoning and ‘less tangible evidence types such as body language’ in their decision-making processes about families (Collins and Daly, 2011: 25). Similarly, Kirkman and Melrose (2014: 4) found that ‘time and workload pressures increased the reliance upon social workers’ intuition to make decisions.’ Contrasting this, Hackett and Taylor (2014: 2196) found that social workers tended to use intuitive reasoning where there was ‘no uncertain dynamic environment’ and where

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there were no ‘high stakes’ or ‘need for strong evidence’, suggesting perhaps that cases that are perceived to be ‘low level’ are less likely to be subject to a more deliberate analytic reasoning strategy.

While intuition and the use of heuristics may result in accurate judgement (Marewski, 2010) and be appropriate for certain situations (Helm, 2011), this mode of reasoning also carries with it the risk of bias, with potentially negative implications for professional judgement. Perhaps for this reason, the KSS (DfE, 2014) suggests that social workers need to be aware of the distinction between:

…intuition and logic in decision-making, the difference between opinion and fact, the role of evidence, how to address common bias in situations of uncertainty and the reasoning of any conclusions reached and recommendations made.