Stop Saying ‘Complacency’, Its Meaningless
Anyone who actually understands the nature of human decision-making, neuro-psychology and neuroscience, knows that the word ‘complacency’ explains nothing.
Next time you hear someone use the word, just ask the speaker what complacency means and what it explains. They won’t be able to tell you.
The use of the word ‘complacency’ projects a sense of superiority by the speaker, demonstrates their ignorance of human decision making and, projects a sense of smugness onto the decision maker.
The reality is, that all human conscious thinking is very slow, very slow. And in the workplace what we all want from humans is efficiency. So, how do we get fallible humans to become efficient at what they do?
What happens is, when humans learn to be efficient at something, the process becomes embodied, hard wired, heuristic and automatic.
We call this automaticity.
The reality is in the workplace, we want workers who can do things without having to think consciously about what they do. Rational conscious thinking is way too slow.
Whenever humans learn, things always start slow, then skills and understanding develops, then finally when proficient, such learning becomes intuitive, embodied and efficient. This is how we drive a car, play music, play sport and complete all highly complex tasks. All elite athletes, musicians and artists will tell you they don’t think when they are in flow.
When humans are at their most efficient, they ‘feel into being’, they don’t ‘think into being’.
Sometimes, this process from slow to fast decision making can take years.
The process of learning to do things automatically is to do things unconsciously. That is, we learn to do things without thinking. When humans operate in automaticity, there is no conscious thinking.
This is supported by all the research we have in neuroscience (https://safetyrisk.net/essential-readings-neuroscience-and-the-whole-person/).
Yet, in Safety, anchored to its methodology of rational cognition, believes that human decisions and actions are brain-centric and that thinking with the brain drives decision making. The only conclusion that can come from such a belief is that the decision-maker lost consciousness, awareness or ‘focus’. Whatever that means. In comes the word ‘complacency’. Then Safety uses the word ‘complacency’ to try to explain what happened. But the word explains nothing. This is no different from James Reason’s silly ‘lapses’, ‘mistakes’ and ‘slips’. These too, explain nothing.
This is why Safety believes that complacency is some kind of lapse in brain-work. Such a belief has no supporting evidence. Such a belief is founded on the myth of the human brain-as-computer. This is NOT how humans make decisions.
This is why belief is so important to methodology. This is also why it is important to study safety beliefs and what the outcomes of such belief generate (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-beliefs/)
In SPoR, we use a very different methodology to understand human decision making and represent this semiotically in the One Brain, Three Minds (1B3M) Model.
One Brain, Three Minds (1B3M) Model
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Even though we have one brain, humans think with different Minds and each Mind operates at a different speed, like a speedometer.
The use of the word Mind does NOT mean brain, it means whole person. In SPoR, there is no body-mind ‘problem’. In reality, few decisions are made in the head, most decisions are made in the body represented by the heart and gut. This is where we get the idea of ‘gut instincts’ and the heart of emotions.
We know that once humans become automatic that efficient human decisions are made pre-consciously and non-consciously as is demonstrated by research like Damasio, Fuchs, and Johnson.
95% of all human decision making is like this.
The Nature of Consciousness (From Damasio)
That is, most of our decisions don’t involve conscious thinking in the brain. What happens is that our body makes the decision and then informs the brain of what it has decided.
This automatic thinking is hard-wired in the body through muscle memory identified against affordances. We respond to our environment (affordances) according to what our body has learned.
This is how humans work through automaticity.
This is why beliefs and methodology in safety matters.
In SPoR, we don’t hold to any of the common beliefs that are held in safety. Safety beliefs simply do not explain why people do what they do.
If you believe the brain is a computer, then you will blame the human for poor thinking and use the word ‘complacency’ to correspond to a lack of thinking as if the word ‘complacency’ explains what happened. The word ‘complacency’ explains nothing. Similarly, using the word dumb (as in HOP) explains nothing.
The reality is, when things go wrong there is a mismatch between a learned heuristic and automaticity and the affordance it confronts.
When things go wrong, of course humans are ‘not thinking’. That’s not how decisions are made.
When humans make so called ‘mistakes’ they are NOT thinking and that’s how we want them to act.
Then Safety comes in and blames humans for ‘not thinking’. What is the outcome of such a belief? It seeks to reprogram the human through training as if decision making is brain-centric. And, it is NOT.
This is why safety beliefs matter.
If humans actually made decisions using rational cognition consciously, the work would never get done.
In order to be fast and efficient humans work in Minds 2 and 3. They work using heuristics and automaticity.
You can read further about automaticity here:
- https://acmelab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/1992_the_ecology_of_automaticity.pdf
- https://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/brenner/mar7588/Papers/bargh-chatrand-ampsy1999.pdf
- https://acmelab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/1997_the_automaticity_of_everyday_life.pdf
- https://safetyrisk.net/?s=complacency
So, when you hear some safety guru tell you that methodology (philosophy) doesn’t matter, they clearly have no expertise in the human unconscious or the neuropsychology of decision making. The truth is:
Your beliefs (methodology/philosophy) drive method (doing).
Which is why beliefs like work-as-imagined and work-as-done are such nonsense. As if the human imagination is divided into two domains. Again, more concocted nonsense from an industry anchored to belief in brain-centrism and its own semiotic myths (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-beliefs-by-semiotic-evidence/). Many of the beliefs like WaI and WaD are based on complete ignorance of human personhood and anthropological evidence. But are convenient for an industry that seeks binary simplistic concoctions to explain why things go wrong.
If you want to move forward in a positive constructive approach to how humans make decisions in the face of risk, then the start is to jettison the belief in the brain-as-computer. If you can dump this concocted safety belief then one can move forward to understanding why people do what they do and then enact better methods for tackling risk. This is what we do in SPoR.
Prof. Robert Long
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