A Great Comparison of Risk and Safety Schools of Thought

If you are struggling to get your head around the Social Psychology of Risk and Safety or wondering why your compliance, BBS or zero harm based programs are having the opposite effect from what your intended then here is a really useful comparison tool by Dr Rob Long.

Download the document here for ease of reading: Risk-and-Safety-Schools-of-Thought.docx (2182 downloads)

All schools of thought have an element of the truth but have made that element ‘the whole truth’, unfortunately Safety is not interested in a trans disciplinary approach to risk or thinking.

Of course there is much more to understand about why some orthodox safety programs and initiatives don’t work. However, social psychology is no silver bullet, it just helps explain why there are no silver bullets but it extends the journey. Once we get our heads out of silver bullets and begin to be realistic about human judgement and decision making, then we may better able to make sense of risk, broaden our approaches to its understanding, analysis and management.