• 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 / Risk Aversion / Safety as Avoidance

Safety as Avoidance

September 5, 2015 by Dr Rob Long 26 Comments

Safety as Avoidance

Depositphotos_13777113_s-2015The language of ‘error’ is unhelpful when it comes to understanding human judgment and decision making. One can assemble pyramids of ‘unsafe acts’ and ‘unsafe conditions’, fault trees of ‘active and latent failures’, maps of ‘violations’, ‘slips’ and ‘missed barriers’, sets of hazard conditions and, classify ‘omissions’, ‘organisational factors’ and ‘system failures’ and still not have a clue about the fundamentals of motivation or how social arrangements affect decision making. Most of the noise assembled about ‘human error’ is driven by systemic and mechanistic efforts in trying to understand the social psychology of decision making from a flawed assumption: that humans are behaviorist cogs in a system. It’s like trying to understand fruit with a geological tool.

When I look at the legacy of human error discourse in the safety sector all I see is the continual perpetuation of a Calvinist projection of original sin. One only has to look at the popular Bradley Curve to realize that its assumption is that humans are born into ‘unsafety’. The Bradley Curve labels this condition ‘natural instincts’ and humans must be saved from themselves. The Bradley Curve is one of the most absurd models in safety. It is a religious projection of unsafety as a ‘natural state’ without interventions of others. Here is a model (https://vimeo.com/124273239) that then justifies the interference in the freedom of others, in the name of saving people from themselves.

In safety we assume that an error made by someone in an organization is a consequence of miscalculation, incompetence, bad luck, bad choice, stupidity or impotence in the face of some challenge. It carries with it the aura of failure and original sinfulness. No wonder that safety is so seduced by the language of immortality and infallibility – zero. This comes from it’s religious like avoidance of embracing error. Error must be suppressed and repudiated.

Error avoidance and error denial is the ‘way of being’ now for safety. Reinforced by an anthropology which rewards only the right answers and good grades. When there is any error (miscalculation) or falling short of expectations, one must be crucified. This is the experience of most safety people I know in tier 1 organisations. Any error must incur a Spanish inquisition. The language and symbol of zero amplifies the power of error and there must either be a sacrificial lamb or a purge of cleanliness. When safety has lost control, there must be blame.

Unfortunately, error avoidance directly contradicts the idea that human development advances by taking risks. Error avoidance is also fallibility suppression. So, everyone walks around delicately trying to not step into the black hole of error yet we believe that Science and discovery are all about a willingness to embrace error. If humans held to the security of the status quo, there would be no evolution or advancement. There is no innovation or learning without risk.

Acknowledging the likelihood of error before it occurs makes it easier to abandon the kind of rhetoric, symbols and language that anticipates no error. The belief in no error (omniscience, omnipotence, immortality) then requires a new language to hide error, rather than learning from it. Once the language has changed it is then easy to set meaningless goals.

Embracing error means one must acknowledge the life of uncertainty. This doesn’t mean that one wishes others to be harmed. Binary thinking is immature thinking that denies complexity and only sees the world in black and white. Embracing error is supported by the logic of learning, avoidance is the illogic trajectory of anti-learning. The binary mindset only hears the avoidance of responsibility and accountability. The argument goes, that if people are not threatened with punishment and sever consequences, they will not be motivated to avoid error. Here we are back to the assumption of original sin. The language of error doesn’t assume anyone does good but in its binary cocoon can only think of avoiding error.

I remember being staggered in 1976 watching the Olympics and Nadia Comaneci receive a perfect score in gymnastics, 10. Strange that in all of the advancements in gymnastics since then (by score) no one has since been perfect. In one sense it is good that Don Bradman fell short of the perfect 100. What happens to someone when you tell them they are perfect, when one reaches the pinnacle of no error? What happens the next day to the one declared to be inerrant? What happens when anyone deviates from a desired goal? What happens when you or I fall short of any desired performance? What is the best human thing to do when someone falls short of expectations?

To be error embracing doesn’t mean encouraging gratuitous error (the binary seduction). Error embracing is a mindset of non-avoidance but not fatalism. Weick called it a disposition of ‘preoccupation with failure’, Hudson calls it ‘chronic unease’, I call this ‘entertaining doubt’. The language of perfection only primes blindness in perception, thereby increasing risk.

The anticipation of no error (zero) creates a delusionary disposition that expects no surprises and punishes learning. A mindset of error avoidance creates a preoccupation with barriers, holes in cheese and fear of surprise. Denial means when the surprise comes, one will be more fragile and less resilient in the mismanagement of it.

If you want to read more, the best book I know on the topic is by Bauer and Harteis (2012) ‘Human fallibility, The Ambiguity of Errors for Work and Learning’. Springer. Germany.

  • 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: Risk Aversion, Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk, Zero Harm Tagged With: avoid injuries, avoidance, Bradley Curve, duPont, Safety, Zero Harm

Reader Interactions

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
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’!
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS, CHECKISTS, REGISTERS, TEMPLATES and APPS
  • Safety Acronyms

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

Three Cheers for the Safety Literalists

Sticks and Stones and the Nonsense of Zero Harm

Anchoring Safety to Objects

Right Then Children, Sit Up Straight and Take Some Safety

Safety Superstitions

Free Online Module: Introduction to The Social Psychology of Risk

The Social Psychology of Risk Event Exploration (Investigation) Knowledge

Mental Health, Risk and Safety

Zero as Morally Wicked

Dumb Ways to Discourse, a Failed Approach in Safety

A Picture Tells a Thousand Lies in Safety

Consciously Safe, Unconsciously Unsafe or Head in the Sand Safety

A Question of Ethics

What is a Safety and Risk ‘Thinking Group’?

It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!

How Workers Really Make Decisions

Safety as Ritual Performance

The Dynamics of Dehumanisation

Selective and Slow Harm is not Zero Harm

The Safety Charade as Tokenism in Safety

Safety’s Garden of Eden Complex

Due Diligence Workshop Sydney 20,21 February 2019

You Have No Idea What Goes on in the ‘Real World of Safety’

Positives and Negatives in Dialectic in Safety

Right and Wrong in Safety

Safety and The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Abby Normal Safety

Ten Risk and Safety Program Essentials

Free Download – Real Risk – New Book by Dr Robert Long

We can Value Safety but Safety is not a Value

The Binary Barnacle

What You Profess in Safety

Utopian Language and the Quest for Perfection in Safety

The Curse of Dataism

I was just trying to Help

Speaking Truth to Power and Safety

Human Factors Factors

SPoR and Myth

Desensitisation–the by-product of ill-conceived safety initiatives

Complacency and The Wayward Mind

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