One night last fall I left work at 9 PM. A sloppily-dressed blonde woman in her early 40’s approached me & said her car had broken down in the parking lot of a nearby restaurant. Said she lived in a town an hour away, didn’t have AAA, was new to the area, didn’t know anyone to call for assistance. She asked me to drive her to the Grayhound bus station. I suggested she call a cab, she said she had only enough money for bus fare. I offered her $10 for the cab, she said “forget it,” & walked away. At the time, there were a lot of people around.
Couple of days later my local paper ran an article about a woman (same parking lot as mine) who had given a ride to the Grayhound station to a woman telling the same story I heard – she was robbed at gunpoint & her car was taken. I called the police, gave them the description of the woman who talked to me, it matched the car-jacker. They asked why I hadn’t given the woman a lift & I said “It just didn’t feel right.”
Yesterday, leaving a store, a clean but poorly-dressed woman came up to me & said she’d locked herself out of her car. Didn’t have AAA. New to the area, didn’t know anyone to call. Asked me to drive her to a grocery store 10 miles away, where her friend works. I moved my rollerblades out of the passenger seat & let her in. We exchanged first names, chatted about the weather, the war, etc. I let her out at the grocery, she thanked me, & that was that.
Later I told a male friend about this & he said “You are fucking nuts!”
Was I right or wrong to trust my instincts – this particular incident aside?
I dunno given your history I would have agreed with your friend and been more cautious. I try to listen to my instincts but what made you let the lady in and drive her to the grocery store given that prior a similar approach gave you a different feeling.
cherry – I don’t really know. That’s why I’m asking. My instinct was right both times, but all I can say is what it “felt like”. The first woman raised my hackles, the second one didn’t. Is this pure animal instinct or human intelligence operating at some basic level?
summerbreeze - I am with you. I trust my instincts. I don’t think it is animal instincts so much as being in tune with body language, subtle differences in people’s attitudes. I bet if you had offered cab fare to the second woman she would have accepted, meaning she had no other motive and was being honest.
It sounds like you are…so don’t take this the wrong way.
There certainly has to be something about “woman’s intuition”. I am male, and women always seem so emotional to me. However, they tend to be able to seperate those emotions from their instincts.
I can’t do that…so I don’t trust my instincts. I think about any situation before making an action (or at least I try). I would never give a ride to a stranger.
The mind as we humans tend to think of it (= it thinking of itself as a mechanism!) is merely the verbally coded part, the set of experiences and beliefs and sensations and interpretations that have been encoded into words in our head for subsequent reconsideration and whatnot. The rest is emotional. Emotions are cognitive. You match a set of impressions/sensations to a history of same and assess them. Intellectualization follows, if it occurs at all. Emotions are earlier, sometimes more accurate (though not always, and not always useful without interpretation), and more ubiquitous.
If you feel something strongly, you’d be a fool to discount what you feel. If you have time and opportunity, distilling an interpretation can help, assuming your habits are not developed around ignoring feelings or rationalizing all experiences so as to maintain a consistent worldview you’re fond of intellectually at all expenses, etc.
Short answer: Hell yeah, trust your instincts. Live by 'em. And learn from 'em in your spare time like they were textbooks.
Thanks for the input, everyone. Yes, I’m a woman, bjohn13, & a southern woman. I’m of an age where, as girls, we were told by our mothers to trust our female intuition (as opposed, I believe, to male rationality) & given the mixed messages to smile a lot & be friendly to everyone – but don’t give rides/talk to/take candy from strangers.
Nice explanation of instinct, AHunter3. Helps me understand the source of “feels right/feels wrong”. I’ll be more confident about going with what is clearly a distillation of experience and observation. But you make me wonder even more about the elderly people who fall for all kinds of scams – wouldn’t you think their experience would make them a little more careful?
It’s not always black & white, tho, is it? I admit when the second woman picked up her large purse and reached inside while I was driving her to the grocery store, I had a big ol’ qualm. (She needed a Kleenex.)
Do y’all think that “Homeland Security” – all these colorful “alerts” – tends to make us more suspicious, less trusting of our instincts?
How do you know the car-jacked woman wasn’t operating on instinct?
I would have put it more tactfully than your friend, but I agree with him.
You know that a violent criminal is using a method to prey on innocent citizens. You cleverly avoid their trap by generously offering them money (which they decline, strongly suggesting they are up to no good).
You then meet someone using exactly the same technique. Instead of offering them cab fare, you risk being mugged. (You also go 10 miles out of your way, but it’s your time!)
Why take the risk?
I’m all for courtesy, but when a complete stranger comes up with a wildly improbable tale (especially in the days of mobile phones), I put my safety first.
Finally, having been instinctively right just twice, you want to know if you can trust your instincts.
It’s certainly not mathematically significant!
My life experience governs my charitable instincts in most cases at this point in my 44 year old life.
Virtually every person I have seen in public places asking for money from strangers for whatever is generally running some kind of scam. I have given money in several instances in these scenarios and without fail if I passed by the place where they asked me for the cash, the person in need was still where they were when I given them the money hours earlier to get gas or a cab or etc.
The interesting thing is that some of them in these scams have lower limits as to how much they will take and will refuse change. Dollars only please and they’re not all homeless people doing this. Many look well fed and reasonably well clothed. I suppose for the scam to work they have to look halfway Joe or Jane average “normal”.
Oh, I’ve acted instinctively before, glee and been right. The nearly-identical circumstances of these two incidents was what got me wondering. And I didn’t offer the second woman cab fare because I’d just spent all my cash.
please don’t take this the wrong way - you’re obviously a helpful, trusting person!
But I do worry about nice people being exploited. It’s easy to make a phone call these days - why do these people have such a series of bad ‘coincidences’ so that the only thing that will help them out is your time or money?
Also I think deciding if you have accurate instincts is difficult.
When we make a successful judgement, we congratulate ourselves and remember it.
By contrast, if our instinct is wrong, then we prefer to suppress the memory. (If you need an example, think about how your friends who gamble describe their results. They ‘break even’, or ‘make a small profit’. How come gambling is a multi-million dollar profit industry?! No-one likes to remember their losses.)
If you are interested in how well you judge, then record every time you use your instincts and how well they worked.
The results may disappoint you - but it will be hard evidence!
do cops hassle scam artists that are trying to pull off “donations” rather than actually accept rides/food etc.?
If cops DO try to crack down on them, is it possible that the people who accept the rides are just trying to avoid prosecution by going along with it, only to try again once they get to their next location?
You should almost always trust your instincts. I don’t know where they come from, I don’t know how to explain them, although I lean strongly towards AHunter3’s theory.
As social animals, we have an instinct for reciprocity, which usually translates into helping someone out. However, self-preservation is a far stronger instinct, and it will seldom lead you wrong. I’m a woman, but I don’t notice much difference between males and females in this instance- we all have that “creepy guy radar”. (There was a thread on this exact topic not too long ago.) Ignoring it can be a big mistake. Any person or situation that makes you feel uncomfortable, frightened, or just “not right” in some way is worth getting away from. You may be wrong, but I believe it is better to be safe than to be sorry.
As for the 2nd woman you did help, I don’t know what to say. Maybe you just got lucky. I personally would not have helped a stranger with a story like that, and never if I were alone in the car. Obviously you got a different “vibe” off the 2nd woman, but it was still dangerous. Being right a few times doesn’t really mean all that much mathematically, as glee pointed out. And even if it did, I still wouldn’t put too much faith in it- being right frequently will at most make you a new friend, but being wrong even once could be unbearably costly.
Unfortunately, I think in cases like this, it’s safe to listen to your more negative instincts, but not too safe to listen to your positive ones. Helping someone in need is a kind and noble thing, of course, but being skeptical is what will keep you alive. If something feels wrong, it probably is. If something feels okay, be careful anyway.