hunch

A hunch is a belief or feeling that something is true or likely, formed without complete conscious evidence. It is often described as a gut feeling or intuition. The term in English has long been used to denote impressions that feel persuasive but are not readily articulated, and it is commonly employed to describe preliminary judgments or suspicions that arise from accumulated experience.

In psychology, hunches are linked to intuitive judgment. They emerge from fast, automatic cognitive processes that draw on prior knowledge, cues in the environment, and unconscious pattern recognition. They can be accurate in familiar domains where a person has substantial expertise, but they are also susceptible to biases and errors when information is scarce, misleading, or when cognitive shortcuts misfire.

Hunches can serve as starting points for further inquiry, guiding initial exploration or hypothesis generation. However, they should not replace evidence-based reasoning. To improve reliability, a hunch should be tested against data, weighed against alternative explanations, and subjected to deliberate analysis, especially in high-stakes or novel situations. Recognizing the role of bias, base-rate information, and prior assumptions can help determine when a hunch merits further investigation versus when it should be set aside in favor of systematic evaluation.