• 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 / The Intelligence of the Emotions

The Intelligence of the Emotions

September 22, 2019 by Dr Rob Long 6 Comments

 

imageMartha Nussbaum writes beautifully about the Intelligence of the Emotions in ‘Upheavals of Thought’ (2001). When we take the human unconscious seriously we seek to understand the nature of the emotions and the part they play in human judgment and decision making. Demonizing the emotions (https://safetyrisk.net/emotions-are-not-the-adversary/ ) in ‘head-in-sand-safety’ simply creates the most warped judgments and attributions about why things go wrong and why things go right.

But what of other emotions? What part does boredom or loneliness play in why things go wrong? What happens when Safety sounds the trumpet blast of shame and guilt in the workplace for planning, strategy and risk enactment? What part should humility have in leadership in risk? What is the nature of desire and aspiration and why are these not discussed in the context of safety? How does Safety view depression and anxiety and how does such a view mitigate effectiveness in wellness strategies? All these questions are simply not asked in the safety space. It seems the only emotion Safety cares about is passion. As long as one is passionate about safety it seems one can justify any level of unethical behaviour (https://safetyrisk.net/passionately-unethical-about-safety/).

If one wants to understand oneself one needs to know that the emotions are predominantly beyond cognitive conscious control and operate in the human unconscious. Indeed, it is often others who are much more aware of our emotional state more than us. This places huge importance on the nature of social engagement, relationships and social psychology as a priority in safety.

I was in a workplace recently and every safety sign on display that was presumed to be good, was laced with assumptions that guilt was motivational. When I asked about the posters I found out that no thought had been considered for:

· The psychology of goals

· The psychology of motivation

· The unconscious and semiotics

· Unconscious messaging

· Consideration of trajectory of language

· Graphic consistency and,

· Congruence with safety strategy

All of these are essential if one wants to put up posters about the workplace or seek to motivate people to safety. Unfortunately, the posters I saw counter intuitively did the opposite. How strange that people who are ‘passionate’ about safety are so ignorant about what motivates safety in the workplace.

The psychology of motivation is bread and butter study for anyone in the field of education and learning. Unfortunately, you will find precious little study of this in any safety curriculum. What often results is naïve and unproductive outcomes in safety strategy. Understanding the emotions of guilt, shame and embarrassment in the workplace ought to be foundational for safety people because these trigger under reporting, deficit strategy and suppress conversation (https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/research/workingpapers/wp0807.pdf ). All ably assisted by punitive BBS and the ideology of zero!

So here we see Safety asking people to speak up (https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/resource-library/blogs/blogs-accordions/if-its-not-safe,-speak-up!) and yet undertaking strategies that suppress speaking up, clever! Ah, but let’s not reform the safety curriculum, let’s just pursue strategies of punitive compliance as if somehow by magic things will get better.

imageThe real message one gets from regulators who delight in blitzes in guilt and shame campaigns (https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/news/2019-03/safety-inspectors-blitz-construction-sites-both-sides-border; https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/news/safework-media-releases/safework-blitz-results-in-improved-construction-safety) is: don’t speak up, don’t trust and buckets of fear. In most cases fear, guilt and shame don’t work (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5c03/cfbc761031787464c1291bb23f2f5f9a90fe.pdf).

If one is seeking to create a workplace where trust, care and helping are foundations to a productive culture in safety then a little intelligence in the emotions would be helpful. Unfortunately, anything that doesn’t fit in the paradigm of safety interest in compliance and control, simply doesn’t make the grade. So, trot out pages of paperwork and the ‘tick and flick’ result demonstrates the emotion of boredom.

As long as Safety doesn’t recognize the importance of the emotions to decision making, nothing will change except increased boredom, lethargy, disinterest, shame, guilt and indifference.

Although Martha Nussbaum is heavy reading, she helps make great sense about the intelligence of the emotions and how in some ways our unconscious self thinks better than we do!

We address these concerns in our One Day workshop MiRISC (https://www.humandymensions.com/services-and-programs/mirisc-workshop/) where we learn practical and constructive skills in the psychology of emotions, goals, motivation and making safety campaigns successful.

  • 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: emotional intelligence, emotions

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Suzanne Jackson says

    February 13, 2020 at 7:48 PM

    Yes, but safety is now claiming Emotional Intelligence (EI) in the typical leader as hero myth. To be a safety leader you need to have emotional intelligence. I feel like instead of embracing all the research on the psychology of emotions, the industry has chosen one aspect that can still make one feel guilty. I better go work on my EI!

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      February 13, 2020 at 7:52 PM

      The discourse of EI has been captured by the management sector as something that can be ‘used’ for an outcome. Understanding emotions as a utility for strategy completely warps how the unconscious works and simply constructs it as some mechanistic measurable thing or process. So like ‘human factors’ that is not about humans but factors in systems, EI is not about being intelligent in knowing about the emotions.

      Reply
  2. bernardcorden says

    February 13, 2020 at 7:48 PM

    Pierre Trudeau’s maxim was “Reason before Passion” and he was referred to by President Richard Nixon as a…….”Pinko commie bastard” for refusing to enter the Vietnam War.

    His response to Nixon was……”I’ve been called worse things by much better people”

    Reply
  3. Suzanne Jackson says

    September 23, 2019 at 2:04 AM

    Yes, but safety is now claiming Emotional Intelligence (EI) in the typical leader as hero myth. To be a safety leader you need to have emotional intelligence. I feel like instead of embracing all the research on the psychology of emotions, the industry has chosen one aspect that can still make one feel guilty. I better go work on my EI!

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      September 25, 2019 at 8:59 AM

      The discourse of EI has been captured by the management sector as something that can be ‘used’ for an outcome. Understanding emotions as a utility for strategy completely warps how the unconscious works and simply constructs it as some mechanistic measurable thing or process. So like ‘human factors’ that is not about humans but factors in systems, EI is not about being intelligent in knowing about the emotions.

      Reply
  4. bernardcorden says

    September 22, 2019 at 9:29 AM

    Pierre Trudeau’s maxim was “Reason before Passion” and he was referred to by President Richard Nixon as a…….”Pinko commie bastard” for refusing to enter the Vietnam War.

    His response to Nixon was……”I’ve been called worse things by much better people”

    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
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • 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

Mental Health, Risk and Safety – Part 2

What Does Misinformation Do in Safety?

Culture Silences in Safety – Critical Thinking

The Safety Worldview and the Worldview of Safety, Testing Due Diligence

What Can Safety Learn from Barbie

History and Safety

By What Method Do You Tackle Risk?

Fooled by Certainty

A Poetics of Safety

Safety and Risk Culture Cloud

The Tyranny of Absolutes

Language Shapes Culture in Risk

A Picture Tells a Thousand Lies in Safety

The 5 Ways We Identify Hazards

Overcoming Safety Indoctrination

Talking Risk Videos – Humanising Workers Compensation

7 Incredible Ways To Diagnose Risk More Effectively

Behaviourist Neuroscience as Safety

Don’t Let Evidence Get in the Way of Safety

‘Pause and Ponder’ – what we can learn from social psychology academics

Right Then Children, Sit Up Straight and Take Some Safety

Safety is not Just a Choice

There is Nothing more Imaginative We can Do in Safety

Why we make mistakes

Lemmings for Lemmings in Leadership and Risk

Face-to-Face Safety

Sergeant Safety

The Worm at the Core

The Immediacy of Zero

All Risk is Subjective

Developing Our Inner Introversion

Happy New Year and the ‘Good Life’ Paradox

Why Myths in Safety Work

Bad Moon Rising

The Idealization of Humans and The Zero Delusion

The Shaping of SPoR Intelligence, Skills and Competence in Risk

Implementing SPoR in the Workplace, A Video

Utopian Language and the Quest for Perfection in Safety

A Culture of Care (and sackings…)

Toilet Roll Safety

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