Last year, Hannah Bruns was working as an aesthetician based in Baltimore.
Bruns wasn’t happy at her job. At the time, she was going through her Saturn Return—an astrological transit that occurs when the planet Saturn returns to the exact same zodiac sign and degree as at the moment of your birth.
It was then that a tiny voice in her head kept telling her it was time to quit.
“I couldn’t really explain the ‘how’ of it, just that I knew—the same way you know the sun’s going to come up tomorrow,” says Bruns.
So, without any real plan, she handed in her notice.
Call it a gut feeling. Call it spirit guides communicating from beyond the veil. But this little voice has become increasingly loud for Gen Zers like Bruns, who turned 30 this year. Across generations, Gen Z is the likeliest to say that they’re psychic. They also have double the amount of psychic moments—knowing what someone is going to say before they said it, for instance, or thinking of someone before they texted—per month compared with baby boomers, according to a 2026 Talker Research survey.
But another, less mystical name for this gut feeling phenomenon might just be “intuition.”
Talker Research surveyed 2,000 adults about how Americans employ intuition—the feeling of just “knowing”— in their daily lives. A third of those surveyed say they can sense when something is “off” without explanation, while 26% feel when to walk away from something.
“I know pretty quickly, in my body, when something’s not right,” said Bruns. “It’s almost like my whole body tenses up.”
For a workforce that has been burned by “forever layoffs” and a tumultuous job market, more are leaning on intuition to show them the right path rather than trusting their employer to ultimately take care of them.
Psychic ability, or science?
Scientifically speaking, intuition comes down to unconscious pattern recognition.
“We know in science and psychology that there are different brain processes that can help us access a deeper knowing than what’s in our conscious awareness,” explains Laura Noel, leadership psychologist and executive coach. “Science doesn’t currently support the conclusion that it’s psychic ability.” That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, she adds as a caveat.
But when we are processing information outside of conscious awareness, “that in itself can make intuitive experiences feel extraordinary,” Noel says. For example, going with a gut instinct when deciding between two job offers can help us “align with roles that fit our values,” she says.
Gen Z are no strangers to letting the universe guide their career paths. New Age beliefs like tarot and astrology have hit the mainstream. Viral theories like “lucky girl syndrome” and going “delulu”—both revolving around the idea that believing something enough will make it happen—have gained traction online.
Bruns incorporates a practice called scripting into her daily routine as a way to practice such manifestation. “I write out my dream life and keep reading it over and over until it becomes a reality,” she says.
In the data from Talker Research, what most people surveyed might mean when they say “psychic ability” is actually the brain rapidly and unconsciously comparing current sensory and emotional data against stored lived experiences.
“The best way to think about intuition is your body responding to things your conscious brain isn’t responding to,” said Joel Pearson, neuroscientist and author of a book called The Intuition Toolkit: The New Science of Knowing What Without Knowing Why.
Say you’re strolling around a city’s downtown and hop into a coffee shop. Pearson says within a split second, your brain’s processing hundreds of different signals about the coffee shop—from the music to the hairstyle of the barista to the smells filling the space—at lightning speed, often outside of conscious awareness. Those signals determine whether you want to stay at this coffee shop, or leave and try another one down the road.
“Your brain has learned through all these times you’ve been to coffee shops before that these things are predictors of good coffee, and these things are not,” he adds.
A power everyone has
While everyone has the capacity for intuition, some are more easily able to tap into their sixth sense than others. “We haven’t fully gotten to the bottom of why,” said Pearson.
Pearson posits it has a lot to do with something called interoception: the body’s ability to perceive internal signals, such as hunger, thirst, the need to use the bathroom, and being in tune with them. “Some people can sit there, without using their fingers, and tap out their own heartbeat perfectly,” he says. “Others have no idea—it’s a complete guess.”
Caroline Canny, a 25-year-old publicist based in New York, has always felt a little psychic. At work, this has shown up as a gut feeling about a job listing. She had previously applied for the role and been rejected. “I saw they’d reposted it on LinkedIn while I was at another internship, and I had a really good feeling about the place,” says Canny. “I knew I had to reapply.” Despite the fear of being rejected for a second time, Canny knew she had to put herself out there.
“That was almost four years ago now, and I’ve been there ever since,” she says.
Canny also often knows what a client is going to say before they say it, or has a strong feeling about an idea “even when it doesn’t fully make sense on paper,” she explains. “You just lean into it.”
In an increasingly fast-paced world, intuition has become something of a superpower. Constantly being bombarded with information, opinions, and notifications, and being forced to make a paralyzing number of decisions daily, can create feelings of being overwhelmed and burned out.
“That’s your brain using all the information from the past to do pattern recognition,” says Joy Parrish, senior therapy manager at Headspace, a mental health support platform. “It’s like a machine running in the background, informing you and giving you those signals.”
Instead of overthinking or outsourcing to artificial intelligence, intuition is the most efficient way to make decisions fast by synthesizing swathes of knowledge and past experiences into a single snap judgement.
“One thing that comes up when I work with leadership and CEOs is that they talk about having to use intuition more now than ever,” says Pearson, the author. “There’s so much uncertainty, the world is changing fast, and they don’t have the luxury of time to sit back, read all the literature, and understand all the data.” So they rely more on intuition to make decisions.
Gen Zers are particularly attuned to deal with this rapid pace of change, having come up through so much political and economic instability and entering the workforce in the age of AI. Almost half (44%) of respondents to the Talker Research survey said feeling supported by therapy and mental health care has meant they can rely on their intuition more. And as a result, they can establish self-trust, and distinguish genuinely intuitive, insightful moments from fear and anxiety.
Insight or bias?
Whether it’s “vibe checking” a colleague or setting boundaries in the workplace, “Gen Z grew up very fluent in that; it’s normal for them to name and feel their feelings,” said Parrish at Headspace.
But just because Gen Z are more attuned and vocal about their feelings, doesn’t mean their psychic moments are always 100% reliable.
Pearson says intuition is blocked when you’re “highly emotional, anxious, stressed or depressed.” An example he gives: an anxious flyer boarding a plane. You’re visualizing the plane falling out of the sky, and it’s tempting to think your gut feeling is spelling disaster, but it’s really your irrational fear taking over. Unless you’re a pilot or an airline mechanic, “that’s probably just anxiety speaking,” Pearson says.
Of all the Talker Research survey’s respondents, 35% said they did not feel confident in differentiating between their instincts and anxiety. Factors like remote work, social media, and heavy reliance on AI also made people feel less in touch with their intuition. Intuition is honed through experience—a lifetime of reading microexpressions or subtle nonverbal cues, which is often diminished in remote environments. Social media and AI, meanwhile, overwhelm the brain, making it harder to distinguish an authentic inner voice amid the noise.
Another caution when it comes to relying on intuition is unconscious biases, warns Noel, the executive coach. “I think we have to be willing to question our beliefs,” she says. If you notice your intuitive decision is unbending towards certain groups or situations, is triggered only in moments of high stress, or is closed off to new information, it is worth closer examination.
“Intuition is dynamic and it’s learned from the environment,” adds Pearson. “Just like an AI model, if you put in bad information, your intuition will be biased.”
How to become more intuitive
For those looking to improve and trust their intuition, the trick is to build emotional awareness.
“Before you trust your intuition, check in on your physiological state,” says Pearson. “If you’re stressed, aroused, on edge, or emotional, do something to bring that back down first, so you can separate out the signals.”
Pearson’s five essential rules for using intuition make up the acronym SMILE. The first rule is Self-awareness, or ensuring you aren’t in a heightened emotional state at the time. The second rule is Mastery. “You need to have experience,” he says. “You can’t sit down and be an intuitive chess player without spending time playing chess.” The third rule is not to mistake Impulses and addiction, which can feel a lot like intuition, for intuition. The fourth is not to use intuition for Low-probability events, for example, plane crashes or shark attacks. The final rule is to use intuition in familiar context Environments. When you change or move to a different context or environment, the same rules may no longer apply.
“Start with these five rules for when you should or shouldn’t use intuition,” says Pearson. “Embed those, learn them, and then from there practice intuition every day.”
After quitting her job as an aesthetician, Bruns instantly knew she had made the right decision by trusting her gut.
“I always say it started with the faith of a mustard seed,” she explained. “Sometimes it feels like there’s a trap door at the top of my head, and it opens, and some energy—which feels like my spirit guides, or this divine, loving energy—pours into my body, and I feel so connected to myself and the universe.”
But Bruns wouldn’t call herself psychic.
“I would consider myself more just like extremely intuitive.”