• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

Discover More on this Site

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long Posts
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no HIERARCHY of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2020
    • 167 CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Safety Acronyms
    • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
    • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
    • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
    • Safety Slogans List
    • Road Safety Slogans
    • How to write your own safety slogans
    • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
    • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
    • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
    • Safety Slogans for Work

Actions in ‘Bad Faith’

November 8, 2017 by Dr Rob Long Leave a Comment

Actions in ‘Bad Faith’

dan petersenDan Petersen writes at the start of Chapter 8 in Human-Error Reduction and Safety Management (p. 109):

‘The decision to err, or to work unsafely, is often a very logical choice that is made either consciously or unconsciously by the worker.’

Of course this is a non-sense, many actions we take don’t involve rational choice and/or rationality, nor do we have rational control over unconscious decisions.

It is remarkable how Safety attributes rationality to unconscious human decision making in its quest to find a reason for ‘human error’. If one is unconscious or takes an action unconsciously then by definition one will not be ‘conscious’ of one’s thinking or motivations for that action.

An action taken unconsciously most certainly cannot be described as a ‘rational’ decision but rather a non-rational (arational) decision. And most certainly in disagreement with Ariely (Predictably Irrational) such an action cannot be considered an irrational decision. As Satre (Anti-Semite and a Jew, An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, 1944, p.12) stated emphatically: ‘How can anyone chose to reason falsely?’ Satre called the unconscious action towards dehumanization due to social influences ‘bad faith’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith). Bad faith addresses many assumptions constructed in the notion of fallibility as ‘defilement’. However, The Social Psychology of Risk helps understand how non-rational forces affect and influence decision making (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-the-social-psychology-of-risk-and-safety/ ).

In Being and Nothingness Satre defined ‘bad faith’ as: ‘hiding the truth from oneself’. We all know just how common this is, ‘bad faith’ often surfaces in denial and self-delusion. Sometimes a good fantasy is easier to sustain than the pain of the truth.

So, if one acts under the pressure of political conformance in obedience to the Nazis, in what way is one ‘responsible’ for ones’ actions? This was one of the powerful questions that drove the foundations for study in Social Psychology following WW2. If one acts under self-deception in automaticity to what extent can one be ethically or forensically responsible? If one has been brought up to be sadistic, fundamentalist or ‘primed’ to act in ‘bad faith’, like many of the children I worked with in youth detention (see Risk Makes Sense, 2012, p.24ff) in what way are they responsible for their non-rational actions? So to what extent is the person ‘conditioned’ by religious indoctrination rationally ‘responsible’ for their actions? This is not to dismiss the act of terrorism but rather to highlight the challenge of understanding the dialectic between conscious and unconscious action. This is something the courts deliberate on when crimes are committed in ‘bad faith’.

At the start of the next Chapter Petersen (p.125) states:

‘The second type of decision to err is the unconscious decision; the worker decides unconsciously that it makes more sense to operate unsafely than safely’.

Again what strange logic. How does an unconscious course of action equate to a rational thinking decision? How can this unconscious action be described as ‘sensemaking’? Who ‘decides’ they want to operate unsafely? The very definition of an ‘accident’ assumes there was no rational ‘decision’.

This whole construct by Petersen and much of what is taught in accident causation in safety curricula ignores what is known about the nature of the unconscious, heuristics and automaticity. How can a person in an unconscious state be responsible for a ‘conscious’ decision to be unsafe?

Most human decision making often operates in the arational space, based on heuristics (fast and efficient thinking) or by automaticity due to social arrangements. (Further see the brief videos One Brain Three Minds https://vimeo.com/106770292 or https://vimeo.com/156926212, or Understanding the Unconscious in Risk and safety https://vimeo.com/135536440 )

Understanding the Unconscious, Risk and Safety from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.

It is through heuristics and automaticity that fallible humans are able to undertake actions quickly ‘without thinking’. We want people to make decisions with heuristics as this makes them fast and efficient (see Gigerenzer Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart). Add to this the nature of social circumstance and randomness and many more courses of action humans take are undertaken without thinking. For example, the ‘fight and flight’ response is a necessary heuristic designed to keep us safe. Similarly, the heuristics of attribution, recency and affect enable fallible humans to keep safe. Unfortunately, the same skills required to look for patterns in behavior to make predictions for safety are also the same skills that lead to misattribution and a number of distortion ‘effects’ (foe example the ‘Hot Hand’ fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-hand_fallacy ) This is the ambiguity and paradox of being a fallible and mortal human.

This is why the saying ‘safety is a choice you make’ is a nonsense.

Don’t we wish that actions were as easy to punish as simple violations or mistakes. How neat and tidy to sit with Reason’s ‘Acts and Violations’ and think we have some definitive model of human error (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00140139508925221 ). How easy to hide behind the language of human error and cast judgment on ‘all accidents are preventable’. How much more challenging to actually tackle the problem of ‘bad faith’ and investigate incidents that actually may have no rational cause.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Intuition and Safety - January 24, 2021
  • The Linguistics of Zero - January 24, 2021
  • You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time - January 21, 2021
  • Poisoning the Professional Waterhole - January 21, 2021
  • Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook - January 20, 2021
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Behaviour Based Safety, Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: dan petersen, human erro, unconscious

Reader Interactions

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 21,332,819 Visitors

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join over 30,000 other discerning safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Rob Long on Intuition and Safety
  • Serge Massicotte on Fire Pit Safety
  • Bernard Corden on Intuition and Safety
  • Rob Long on You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time
  • Bernard Corden on You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time
  • Jason Robertson on Are You a Safety Clown?
  • Rob Long on You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time
  • Rob Long on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • Michael Dale on You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time
  • Wynand on Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Featured Downloads

  • Telecommuting Safety Checklist (9180 downloads)
  • Hazardous Substances Risk Assessment Form (342 downloads)
  • Sample-risk-assessment-form.xls (25531 downloads)
  • UV_Risk_Assessment_Checklist-1.doc (877 downloads)
  • Low-Bridges.pps (2153 downloads)
  • Zero-to-HRO.docx (796 downloads)
  • Volunteer-Risk-Assessment-checklist.pdf (743 downloads)
  • Field Activity Risk Assessment Form (670 downloads)
  • Zero-to-HRO-08-September-2017.pdf (635 downloads)
  • Event Risk Management (392 downloads)
  • 2016AmericasSafestCompanies.pdf (1306 downloads)
  • hazard-database.xls (4014 downloads)
  • Risk-Unplugged-Peter-Ribbe.pdf (1119 downloads)
  • Linz Workshop-17_18-Jan.pdf (539 downloads)
  • Risk Intelligent Tract March 2017 (176 downloads)

Recent Posts

  • Intuition and Safety
  • The Linguistics of Zero
  • You Can’t Believe in Zero and Learning at The Same Time
  • Poisoning the Professional Waterhole
  • Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook
  • The Seduction of Slogans in Safety
  • Certificate, Diploma and Masters Studies in SPoR
  • Measurement Anxiety in Safety
  • Are You a Safety Clown?
  • The Quantitative and Qualitative Divide in Safety

Footer

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • AHH$ Covid$afe Chri$tma$ New$letter
    • Paradise by the dashboard light
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
    • What and how should we measure to support recovery from injury?
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • Who is Responsible for This?
    • Who Are Your People?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • It was the SIA until someone wanted to swing from the Chandelier
    • Common Sense is Remarkably Uncommon
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
    • Misleading Indicators
  • Admin
    • Certificate, Diploma and Masters Studies in SPoR
    • Merry Covid Xmas–2020
  • Dr Rob Long
    • Intuition and Safety
    • The Linguistics of Zero
  • Rob Sams
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
    • Social ‘Resiliencing’
  • Barry Spud
    • Barry Spud’s Hazard Control Tips
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

FEATURED POSTS

20 Cognitive Biases That Affect Risk Decision Making

What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?

Three Cheers for the Safety Literalists

Amping it Up in Safety

Social Psychology of Risk Two Day Workshop

The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started

The Conundrum in Discerning Risk

All You Love is Need

Safe Work Australia Continues to Perpetuate Safety Mythology

Pascal’s Wager and Sacred Safety

C. G. Jung on Risk and Safety

Study Social Psychology of Risk Online in 2018

Risk You Can Eat

Keep Your Head In the Game

WHS Research Symposium 2019

Think Different, Act Differently in Risk

I’m Concerned That We Can’t See The Safety Forest For The Safety Trees

Right and Wrong in Safety

Report on SPoR Convention 2018

Why Some People Never Achieve

More Posts from this Category

Paperwork

https://vimeo.com/162034157?loop=0

Due Diligence

https://vimeo.com/162493843?loop=0

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.