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

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) 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 2023
      • 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
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • 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
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • 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
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL 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!
  • THEMES
    • Psychosocial Safety
    • Resiliencing
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Robert Long / Intuition and Safety

Intuition and Safety

January 24, 2021 by Dr Rob Long 2 Comments

Intuition and Safety

Most human decision making is intuitive or tacit, this makes for fast and efficient decision making. Polanyi describes tacit knowledge as knowing ‘more than we can tell’. (The Tacit Dimension (1966) ).

In safety we sometimes refer to tacit knowing as heuristics, micro-rules or habits for decision making. Whilst we refer to habits, it is important to draw distinctions between all three: heuristics, habits and tacit knowing.

Tacit knowing refers to things we know and skills we have but cannot articulate clearly how or why we know them, mostly this knowing is just ‘felt’. Most importantly, implicit knowing should never be associated with the mythology of common sense. Implicit knowing is particularly unique to you and is made up from the sum of your unique experiences, history and background. There is nothing about tacit knowing, which is common, particularly as none of our history is shared identically, even though there are similarities.

We ought to be careful too not to confuse implicit knowledge with ‘automaticity’ (Bargh) nor the nonsense of ‘machine learning’. Tacit knowledge is nothing like the repetition and adjustment of algorithms. The reason why machines don’t learn is ‘feelings’ (what computers don’t have). People are emotionally hard wired into the process of tacit knowing, of ‘feeling’ into decision making. It is mostly through our feelings and emotions that we adjust and adapt in what we tacitly know. And even then, we cannot tell someone how or why we ‘know’ it. Except to say, that all tacit knowing that is felt, is embodied (what Polanyi called ‘indwelling’). This is what we mean when we say we make decisions by the gut or heart. We discuss this in detail when we study One Brain and Three Minds (1B3M) in SPoR (https://vimeo.com/156926212). The next free online Introductory Module will be offered in April. You can register now if you want at: https://cllr.com.au/product/an-introduction-to-the-social-psychology-of-risk-unit-1-free-online-module/

The study of implicit knowing is rejected by science because it seeks to establish a strict, detached and objective way of knowing that only accepts a tightly defined understanding of evidence. Implicit knowing stands in contrast to the seeking of such knowledge and when asked about why and how you know something and how to do things, there is no rational or scientific explanation and yet, you know what to do and how to do it unconsciously.

Implicit knowledge is often revealed in the work of composers who can’t tell you where their Poetics came from. Inspiration seems to come from nowhere but the evidence of presence is in the creation. This is the tacit dimension.

As I research for my latest book Envisioning Risk (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/envisioning-risk-seeing-vision-and-meaning-in-risk/) I researched every single song in the top ten in History and then top 500, and in every song there is reference to transcedence and vision for humanity in: fallibility, love, soul, spirit and non- material experience. Moreso, the evidence is overwhelming that; inspiration, imagination, creativity, discovery, insight and vision come from this non-material source, tacit knowing. This following example from Tommy Emmanuel’s social media site is indicative. See Figure 1. Tommy Emmanuels’s Note.

Figure 1. Tommy Emmanuels’s Note.

clip_image002

Music composition is felt intuitively and even though a computer can be fed algorithms to compose a song, it cannot ‘feel’ the Poetics of the song. Similarly, you might try to explain why you like a song, group or musician, but you will be grasping at straws to explain the inexplicable that is felt in the heart and gut.

There is no surprise that there is nothing in the AIHS BoK or safety curriculum on implicit knowledge. Engineering and Science have no idea what tacit

knowledge is indeed, they marshal their forces against it because, implicit knowing cannot be measured (https://safetyrisk.net/measurement-anxiety-in-safety/ ).

Plato outlined the problem in Meno when he stated that: ‘the search for the solution to a problem is an absurdity; for either you know what you are looking for, and then there is no problem; or you do not know what you are looking for, and then cannot expect to find anything’.

Plato knew that all knowledge was NOT explicit, that it could not be stated explicitly, so therefore when we look at a problem and solution we do so implicitly. And as Polanyi states: ‘and Meno shows that if problems nevertheless exist, and discoveries can be made solving them, we can know things, that we cannot tell’. Discovery, invention, creativity and adaptability, emerge out of implicit knowledge, that is why composers and musicians cannot tell where their ideas came from. Except in hindsight bias where they attribute such composition to a dream or premonition etc. True composition and invention is not a mechanical Technique (Ellul).

Most of the time workers have no idea why they work safely, but we know it wasn’t because they memorized paperwork (https://safetyrisk.net/its-always-about-paperwork/ ). Workers make most decisions in the field implicitly (https://vimeo.com/471823469).

Moreso, workers they cannot articulate what they know or how they know it and yet such knowledge has been acquired and is observable though not measurable. Behaviourist delusions of measurement are pure fiction. Well, if safety loves anything other than zero, its behaviourism (https://safetyrisk.net/the-curse-of-behaviourism/), the grand delusion of measurement attribution.

Then when something goes wrong, in come the engineers, auditors and scientists looking for explicit knowledge as if this was somehow reason or cause for decision making, how absurd. The Brady Review (https://safetyrisk.net/brady-review-nothing-new-no-way-forward/) and the Dreamworld fiasco (https://safetyrisk.net/an-engineering-dreamworld/) are classic examples of engineering bias looking for the solution they already know and the cause that fits their assumptions. This is the way Safety ensures that nothing changes except the balance of bank accounts.

One Brain Three Minds Supplementary from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.

  • 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)

  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’! - May 24, 2023
  • Understanding Safety as a Cultural Reproductive Process - May 23, 2023
  • Thinking Outside the Safety Bubble - May 21, 2023
  • Understanding Language Influencing, A Video - May 21, 2023
  • Safetie - May 21, 2023
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 a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: human decision making, intuition, tacit knowledge

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rob Long says

    January 25, 2021 at 6:32 AM

    Bernard, some of the best rock music ever composed was on LSD demonstrating that you don’t have to be conscious or safe to be brilliant.

    Reply
  2. Bernard Corden says

    January 24, 2021 at 8:05 PM

    Dear Rob,

    Another fascinating blog.

    It had me reflecting on the late George Best, who controlled a football like it was an extension of his feet and mesmerised many opponents and crowds alike with his unique brand of brilliance.

    There is no way you can teach or coach such creativity and ingenuity and amidst enormous pressure to conform to wooden managerial strategies and plans he often hit the bottle and occasionally took to the field under the influence or with one hell of a hangover.

    Denis Law, one of his team mates, was frequently bemused when Best ever had possession and often wondered what the hell would happen next. The frustration was usually short-lived and replaced by a tumultuous roar from the crowd with the ball in the back of the opponent’s net.

    “Rules and models destroy genius and art” – William Hazlitt

    Reply

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

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,521 other subscribers

Recent Comments

  • Rob Long on It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Chris. on It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Pierre Joubert on Zero Doesn’t Work, Road Fatalities Increase
  • James on We are all equal
  • Rob Long on We are all equal
  • James Parkinson on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Admin on We are all equal
  • James Parkinson on We are all equal
  • Rob Long on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Simon Cassin on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Simon Cassin on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe

The KISS of Death in Safety

Is Your Safety World Too Small?

You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time

When Safety (Zero) is Abusive

Hands Up the Best Safety Fraud!

Communicating Professionally in Risk

How NOT to be Professional in Safety

How NOT to do Anything About Culture in Building and Construction

Celebrating 60 Years of Lifeline

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’!
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • Safety Acronyms
  • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS, CHECKISTS, REGISTERS, TEMPLATES and APPS

Recent Posts

  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’!
  • My Story is Better than Yours
  • Understanding Safety as a Cultural Reproductive Process
  • The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser
  • Thinking Outside the Safety Bubble
  • Understanding Language Influencing, A Video
  • Safetie
  • You are NOT the Sum of Safety
  • Update on SPoR in India, Brazil and Europe
  • It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Safety at the Margins
  • Research Basics for Safety
  • We Need Communities and They Need Us
  • Researching Within The Safety Echo Chamber
  • Confirmation Bias, Risk and Being Offensive
  • Lemmings for Lemmings in Leadership and Risk
  • Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging
  • Zero Doesn’t Work, Road Fatalities Increase
  • Can There Be Other Valid Worldviews Than Safety?
  • Evaluating Value by the Value of What You Don’t Know
  • Reality vs Theory, The Binary Divide
  • No Paradigm Shift with BBS
  • The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Is Your Safety World Too Small?
  • What Does Safety Achieve?
  • In Praise of Balance in Risk and the Threat of Extremism
  • We are all equal
  • You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • What in the (Risk & Safety) World is Imagination?
  • iCue Engagement Process
  • SPoR, Metanoia and a Podcast on Change with Nippin Anand
  • For the Monarchists of Safety
  • The Sully Effect
  • All Things Must Pass in Risk
  • Scapegoating and Safety
  • Understanding Habit, Habituation and Change
  • Don’t Mention the War
  • Safety in Design for Who by Who?
  • Beyond ‘What We Do Around Here’
  • Asking the Wrong Questions
  • When Safety (Zero) is Abusive
  • Mandala as a Method for Tackling an Ethic of Risk (a Video)
  • Safety Cosmetics
  • Visualising the EHS Role
  • Towards Dumb
  • Workshops with Dr Long – Vienna, Austria 26-30 June 2023
  • Visual, Verbal and Relational Mapping in Risk Assessment
  • Abduction in Risk and Safety
  • Creating Myths and Rituals in Safety
  • The Safe Christmas Psychosis

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

The Quantitative and Qualitative Divide in Safety

Trinket Safety

Tentative at Tooleybuc

The Intelligence of the Emotions

All You Love is Need

Understanding How People Make Decisions and Judgments

Human Factors Factors

Understanding Safety Myths

Bad Moon Rising

Safety and The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Challenges and Opportunities for Learning in a Crisis

What Are Observation-Conversation Skills?

Natural Born Learners

Coronavirus and the Dunny Paper Effect

The Fallible Factor and What to Do About It

The New Safety Saviour – Algorithms

Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety

Social Psychology of Risk – Body of Knowledge

Tackling the Reality of Harm

Framing Your World

What Can Safety Learn From Desire Paths?

Safety as a Patriarchal Activity

Safety as Faith Healing

The Lexicon of Safety Gibberish

You are NOT the Sum of Safety

200,000 SPoR Book Downloads

A Masters Degree in ‘Tick and Flick’

Cognitive Dissonance and Safety Beliefs

SPoR Convention Canberra 18-21 September 2023

Emotions, Bias and Heuristics in Risk

The Art of the Open Question

Free Online Module: Introduction to The Social Psychology of Risk

What’s Your Resilience Profile?

When Art Speaks to Harm

The Colour of Safety

Is Choice The First Casualty in the Worker’s Compensation War?

Implementing SPoR in the Workplace, A Video

A Philosophy of Safety

A Semiotic Map for Safety

Safety Can’t Control Nature (or People)

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,521 other subscribers

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

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY

x
x