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Is your organization suffering from “Optimism Bias”?

Apathy, complacency and denial are three very common barriers to the implementation of or adherence to safety policy and procedure.

But there's a fourth element we need to consider. This is the tendency to think that bad things are less likely to happen to us than others or, that for some reason, good rules which should always be obeyed somehow don’t apply to us.

Do we remind our loved ones of the dangers of texting while driving yet find ourselves doing just that when at a traffic light?  A protective father makes sure his family wears life jackets while out on the water but he doesn’t. Those who don’t wear seatbelts fall into this group too.

This tendency was first described as "optimism bias" by Neil Weinstein PhD in the health care field in the 1980s.

Optimism bias is often the reason we take short cuts or break well understood rules. The more often we take a shortcut without a negative outcome, the more we continue to do so. This inherently leads to greater complacency and the combination can be deadly. Just because “it hasn't happened to us before”, doesn't mean it can't happen in the future. In fact, the longer you take short cuts and ignore the rules, the greater the chance of your “number coming up”.

Given that this tendency is so insidious, we need to take proactive steps to break this cycle of dangerous thinking. One way to hit the “reset button” is at your safety meetings.  Break down a current work related accident and look for the contributing elements. More often than not, if you pull on that thread, optimism bias will be lurking.

Could optimism bias have also been at play in the decision cycles and sequence of events contributing to the BP disaster in the Gulf?

 

Larry Kaminer is president of the Personal Safety Training Group offering personal safety and crime avoidance training to companies as part of their workplace violence programs. Larry is a featured speaker at the Louisiana Governor's Safety & Health Conference.

larryk@personalsafetygroup.com  www.personalsafetygroup.com

 

Larry Kaniner

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