counter-intuitive 
adjective
Contrary to intuition or to common-sense expectation: this explanation sounds perversely counter-intuitive computer analyses have in the past produced a number of counter-intuitive results...
- I must confess that most of my readers have found my argument utterly counter-intuitive and contrary to their personal experience.
- Instead, what Harford has done is convey the excitement, the power, and the often counter-intuitive results of economic thought.
- And what we're finding which is especially curious, is that the results are counter-intuitive.
Derivatives
counter-intuitively
- Perhaps counter-intuitively, the most comprehensive study of the subject found that clients who were ordered to drug treatment by a judge were more likely to complete the program successfully than those who volunteered for treatment.
- Or, counter-intuitively, global warming could disrupt the North Atlantic Gulf Stream, thereby ushering in another Ice Age and giving Provence a Siberian climate.
- What the President has done in this package is move much closer to a world where we tax capital less, enabling, perhaps counter-intuitively, all of us to have higher wages.