We all know the feeling. You make a decision that turns out to be a bad call and looking back you can see clearly what you should have decided—but didn’t. You realize that you really had all the information you needed to make the right (or at least a better) decision the whole time. So why didn’t you?
The reason is very often cognitive bias.
Safety leadership is subject to the same traps of thinking that affect all human beings: that is, we tend to make inaccurate judgments about future probabilities in predictable ways. In a complex world, cognitive biases allow us to establish shortcuts that simplify decision making, make our world more predictable, and absorb new information consistently with what we already know. Cognitive biases are automatic and unconscious. They shape how human beings select and process information. But there are sometimes critical decision points at which cognitive bias can be disastrous. While any single decision may be insignificant by itself, a series of small decisions can create a path to disaster. Here are five of the most common biases as they manifest in safety leadership:
- Anchoring – This bias involves putting too much weight on the first information received or on a specific piece of information over all others. For example, when an accident happens, how often does the first cause for which there is evidence capture the organization’s attention and come to dominate subsequent thinking and analysis to the exclusion of other causes – especially cultural and systems issues?
- Recency bias – This bias leads people to pay more attention to data that are easily available (e.g., most recent and therefore most memorable) while neglecting less readily available data. A recent history of low injuries, for example, could lead busy leaders to conclude that safety performance is fine.
- Sunk cost bias – This bias involves making choices that support past decisions or that escalates our commitment to a course of action to which we’ve invested time, energy, reputation, or money—even when data indicate the course of action may be mistaken. Here you might see safety leaders ignore data that indicates a course of action the leader has invested in isn’t working.
- Actor-observer bias – This bias skews our evaluation of data in favor of our ego, explaining others’ behaviors in terms of their personalities rather than their situations, but doing the opposite when explaining our own behaviors. For example, you might see leaders state that injuries are a result of people not following the rules, but when they trip in the office it’s just bad luck.
- Overconfidence – Sometimes we overestimate our abilities and the accuracy of our predictions, perceptions, and judgments, despite evidence to the contrary. Here you might see leaders assume that because they deployed a safety intervention that the organization is following it and fail to notice the signs that it is not.
So how can we mitigate the effects of cognitive bias on safety leadership? Simply having knowledge of cognitive bias is a good start. First, become acquainted with the literature on cognitive bias. Check them against your experience – do you recognize any? Next, put this knowledge to use when weighing important issues. Leaders who monitor themselves for the effect of biases in their thinking, and who enlist others in the effort to check for bias, can improve the quality of safety decisions and the outcomes they produce. While understanding cognitive bias won’t change every decision you make, knowledge of its effects can inform the decision making process – and it provides another good reason to engage in open communication, share and dissect mistakes openly, and foster a culture that strongly favors effective safety functioning.
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