The Role of Cognitive Bias in Safe Decisions
What role does safety play in organizational decision making and how does cognitive bias affect it?
Science of Decision Making in Safety: Stating the Obvious
You are the maintenance manager at a recycling plant. You have 30 work orders outstanding and you’re already over your budget for the month, but a request comes in to repair an important piece of equipment. Your worker assigned to evaluate the problem says it will be $1000 to repair the machine. He can keep…
VIDEO: Cognitive Bias in Safety
This is the third in a series of 3 videos in which I explore the role of cognitive bias in decision-making (Watch Part 1 here and Part 2 here). In this final video, I provide an example of how our understanding of cognitive bias relates to safety. Part Three: Learn more about our approach to…
VIDEO: How Safety-Related Decision Making is Influenced by Cognitive Bias
There is a growing body of knowledge which shows that human thinking tends to be flawed, in predictable ways. Cognitive bias can cause even good leaders to make poor safety decisions. This is the second part of a 2-part video. Watch Part 1 here Learn more about our approach to behavior based safety
VIDEO: Do you know how to make safe decisions?
Most safety leaders and most operations leaders think they know how to assess risk effectively. Ineffective safety decisions happen at the front line employee level, but we leaders know better. This turns out to be false. A growing body of knowledge on cognitive bias shows that human thinking in general tends to be flawed, in…
Cognitive Bias in Terminal Two
I was on the way home from Houston, after several days of meetings with clients about decision making, cognitive bias and the prevention of serious and fatal injuries. I was in the terminal walking toward the gate. First I saw the kid, wild eyed, head jerking back and forth, looking down toward the gate and…
