Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

insight
A sudden awareness of the 
relationships among various elements 
that had previously appeared to be 
independent of one another.
FIGURE 7
(a) In an impressive display of insight, Sultan, one of the chimpanzees in Köhler’s 
experiments in problem solving, sees a bunch of bananas that is out of reach. (b) He then 
carries over several crates, stacks them, and (c) stands on them to reach the bananas.
(a)
(b)
(c)
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258
 Applying Psychology 
in the 21st Century 
 The Thoughts Behind 
Avoiding Danger: When 
Hunches Save Lives
The sight was not that unusual, at least 
not for Mosul, Iraq: a car parked on the 
sidewalk, facing opposite traffi c, its 
windows rolled up tight. Two young boys 
stared out the back window, their faces 
leaning together as if to share a whisper. 
The soldier patrolling closest to the car 
stopped. He had an urge to move back 
before he knew why: “My body suddenly 
got cooler, you know, that danger 
feeling.” (Carey, 2009b)
That “danger feeling” saved the sol-
dier’s life: Moments after he turned to re-
treat, an improvised explosive device—a 
home-made bomb—detonated the car, 
throwing the soldier to the ground. 
United States troops patrolling Iraq 
have expensive military equipment to help 
them avoid the threat of hidden bombs, but 
it turns out that even the best equipment is 
not as effective as the soldiers’ own 
hunches. Researchers are studying sol-
diers’ thought and decision-making pro-
cesses to determine how exactly they sense 
imminent danger, and the initial answers 
are surprising. 
We might expect that training plays a