Cognitive bias

Psychological bias will be affected by various factors, including subjective factors like characters, emotion and experiences, and external environment factors like physical environment, information expression method and the behavioral manifestations of the persons around. These factors will lead the people to all kinds of cognitive bias. In particular, in case of unforeseeable or... 

Reason, J.T. 1997. Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents. Ashgate, Brookfield, VT. Roberto, MJk. 2002. Lessons from Everest the interaction of cognitive bias, psychological safety, and system complexity. California Management Review 45(1), 136-58. 

Cognitive bias 12 6.00 Perm, person related functions 6.00... 

PROTECTING YOUR DECISION MAKING FROM COGNITIVE BIAS... 

The purpose of this chapter is to acquaint you with cognitive bias and help you devise strategies for avoiding the errors it can create. 

This overview discusses findings relevant to healthcare and provides a framework for understanding cognitive bias from a practical, application-oriented perspective. A rich scientific literature explores cognitive bias. The primary insight from the available research is that human beings tend to make predictably inaccurate judgments of known types about the probability of future events. 

Michael A. Roberto, "Lessons from Everest The Interaction of Cognitive Bias, Psychological Safety, and System Complexity," California Management Review, 45 (Fall 2002) pp. 136-158. 

Cognitive bias played a significant role in the fatal decisions. Three types of bias were particularly noteworthy ... 

Healthcare leaders can make most decisions without a purposeful consideration of cognitive bias. Cognitive bias can be disastrous, however, at critical decision points. Therefore, it is important to appreciate the role cognitive bias can play. Cognitive bias can cause healthcare leaders to underestimate exposure risk and overestimate the capability of systems to mitigate hazards. While any single decision may be insignificant by itself, a series of small, incorrect decisions may create a path to disaster. 

Understanding cognitive bias improves decision making. Knowledge of cognitive bias positions the leader and treatment... 

As you read through the descriptions, do not try to memorize every cognitive bias. Rather, study how these biases function in decision making. Look for how they enable a person to move forward in the face of uncertainty and how they can also produce errors of judgment. 

Among the problems to which these leaders are blind are the very unpredictability of their own behavior and the resultant erosion in trust between leaders and followers. These developments are detectable with the Organizational Culture Diagnostic Instrument (see chapter 3) they show up as adverse changes in the OCDI dimensions of procedural justice (team members see the leaders behavior as unfair and untrustworthy), perceived organizational support (of team members by their leaders), and upward communication (by team members to their leaders about unsafe acts). The hazards and costs of cognitive bias thus often run deep in both the administrative and clinical chains of command in the healthcare organization. 

It is natural to believe that we are objective and don t "lie" in this way, but remember—these biases are universal and unconscious tendencies. They do not stem from intellectual dishonesty. This is why, using the scientific method, we must go to such great lengths to protect against cognitive bias. 

To understand how cognitive bias can work below the level of your awareness and affect your leadership behavior and your influence on others and the culture, consider the following case from a manufacturing plant. Focus on the plant manager s cognitive bias and resulting behavior. Next, look for the effects of his behavior on his direct reports. Finally, look for the biases active in his team. Notice that none of these people were aware of the role the biases were playing in their behavior ... 

How does the successful safety leader put this knowledge to work During important decisions, successful decision makers use their working knowledge of cognitive bias to self-monitor and to enlist others in the effort to monitor for cognitive bias. For the treatment team member and safety leader whose choices affect the success with which exposure to hazards is controlled, this exercise can be critically important. 

Study the research on cognitive bias and encourage other safety leaders to do the same. 

Most important, the successful leader understands that the culture influences the extent to which errors of cognitive bias are allowed to flourish. A culture in which open communication is encouraged and mistakes are openly shared and dissected is the best protection against the potentially detrimental effects of cognitive bias. 

Multiple participants indicated that skills training was most valuable to them, They appeared impressed with the documentation that was presented as a basis for the concepts, and the cognitive bias segment appears to have been new material that many found very useful... 

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