There are certain feelings or inklings about things that women just have but cannot explain. For instance, have you ever had a bad feeling about someone, and it turns out to be true?
Sure, when you first built up the courage to tell your friend that the new man in her life rubbed you the wrong way, you didn't have any evidence to back it up, other than a gut feeling.
However, when you hear months later that he's been two-timing her, it turns out that your gut feeling was correct. If you're a good friend, you'll resist the temptation so say "I told you so," and instead just quietly relish in the fact that your instincts were right.
A real-life example of this happened when a mom knew that the Child Protective Service agents visiting her house weren't who they said they were.
Since anything is possible, you could be psychic. But chances are you just have a healthy dose of women's intuition.
Now, a new study in the journal Molecular Psychiatry proves that women's intuition is the real deal.
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A new article in the journal Molecular Psychiatry confirms what women have known for thousands of years: women's intuition is scarily accurate.
This isn't surprising to those of us who have correctly guessed about a friend's pregnancy or sensed when a new boyfriend was up to no good.
Still, it's nice to have scientists confirm it!
The phenomenon of "women's intuition" is a complex one. In fact, people have talked about the female "sixth sense" for generations.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines intuition as "the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and interference."
It's a bit harder to pin-point what exactly women's intuition is, but it's usually a gut feeling that you just can't shake, often about health or emotions.
Of course, for a while, the idea of women's intuition was just as unsubstantiated as the above definition. After all, the whole point is that it's simply a feeling that can't be explained.
Luckily, the tricky task of proving something that is particularly difficult to "see" has been taken on by researchers.
Molecular Psychiatry conducted a study to find out whether a woman's intuition was a real thing that could be backed by science.
In the experiment's abstract, they say they "conducted a genome-wide meta-analysis of cognitive empathy using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes' Test."
In other words, they tested eye contact and brain chemistry to see if women were better at reading emotional cues.
This type of test involves more or less what it sounds like. The journal report explains, "Participants are shown scaled, black-and-white photographs of eye regions of actors, and they have to choose the cognitive state portrayed from the four options provided."
This type of test has existed for years, and according to the Cambridge University Press, has been used in the past to study individuals with autism and Asperger's syndrome.
In this particular study, the results of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes' Test were compared based on gender.
Participants were customers of the 23andMe DNA testing and ancestry service. More than 88,000 people were involved in the online test.
It will probably be no surprise to you that the women who participated scored much better than the men when it came to reading the emotions of the subject and displaying empathy.
For now, we don't know exactly why that is, but it may have to do with an ability to spot tiny facial expressions and recognize the related emotions.
As it turns out, there is scientific proof revealing that women do in fact have a special kind of intuition and ability to read people that men do not necessarily have.
So, next time you have a gut feeling about someone, trust it! It may be inexplicable and inside your head, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
Make sure to SHARE these findings with your friends on Facebook and let them know that they may have been right all along!
