The ‘Roots’ of Behaviour
It’s always fascinating watching the risk industry battle with behaviourism, because it doesn’t work (https://safetyrisk.net/the-curse-of-behaviourism/ ). It doesn’t matter that behaviourism doesn’t work, Safety believes it does. So, the constant quest is to go deeper, even though it doesn’t know how to go deeper into more behaviourism. Hence we see projected courses like this one from the NSCA . Now we have to go to the ‘roots’ of behaviour apparently contained in ‘three inducing factors’. Never mind that these ‘factors’ are defined poorly, especially culture, just don’t say anything and keep silent about human judgment and decision making. Don’t talk about the elephant in the room.
One of the things you won’t find in either safety curriculum, risk curriculum, SRMBoK or AIHS BoK is discussion about the elephant, human judgment and decision making. This was the subject of my first book in the series on risk: Risk Makes Sense, Human Judgement and Decision Making (for free download here: https://www.humandymensions.com/product/risk-makes-sense/).
All Safety wants to do is talk about ‘behavioural psychology’ to the exclusion of a Transdisciplinary approach (https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-safety/ ). When the only string in your fiddle is behaviourism, you’ll never kick the habit of blaming (https://safetyrisk.net/kicking-the-behaviourism-habit/). This is where the quest for roots to behaviourism will take you. Then it doesn’t matter what language you throw about, the discourse of behaviorism remains, even when you call it ‘neuroscience’ (https://safetyrisk.net/turning-neuroscience-into-behaviourism/ ).
So when you look at this proposed course, the discourse of behaviourism remains. The only reason to drive for the ‘roots’ of behaviours is because the assumptions of behaviourism, don’t work. It’s a bit like driving for 1% less harm rather than sprouting the mantra of zero harm, the language changes but the discourse remains.
At no time are the assumptions of behaviourism questioned in the safety world of invisible elephants. It all then becomes about: ‘unsafe behaviours’ and ‘tackling inducing factors’. Guess what, it’s still behaviourism. It’s never about: subjects, helping, personhood, decision making, judgment or care, its all about behaviours-as-objects. Once behavior is made an object, it can be measured and controlled. And there goes that elephant (https://www.triarchypress.net/in-search-of-the-missing-elephant.html) flying out the window along with a saddle full of learning, intelligence and critical thinking.
The trouble is that behaviourism can never provide: ‘insight’, vision or ethical outcomes. When one makes fallible persons into a behavioural product all ethical methodology goes out the window, also carries out by that elephant. Of course, Safety doesn’t see the elephant, because it doesn’t know it exists. Hence, the delusion that behaviourism can hold its position as denoted savior for zero harm.
In safety, even culture is defined as a set of objects so that it can be measured and controlled. The discourse (Power in language) remains the same.
Of course, the reasons why people do what they do, is not confined to three ‘inducing factors’. Risk and safety is a wicked problem and any simplistic discourse about 3 inducting factors is not just misleading but helps to serve the delusions of behaviourism and blindness to elephants.
So lets give a cheer for behaviourism and celebrate the fact that Safety is expert at rehashing stuff that doesn’t work and then calls it ‘vision’.
Dr Rob Long
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Rob Long says
Bernard, the elephant in the room for safety is always politics, power and ethics that it never talks about. It prefers that these remain hidden under the delusion that safety is a neutral, objective activity, not the sustainer of a hegemony of selective silence about what matters and noising about everything of no significance. Such is the power of zero.
Bernard Corden says
The background of the incumbent chairperson with Safe Work Australia Diane Smith (Propa) Gander is quite interesting and includes senior roles with:
a) Wesfarmers
b) Westpac
c) McKinsey & Company
d) University of WA Business School
e) AGL Energy
Rob Long says
This could be a start https://safetyrisk.net/mapping-social-influence-strategies/
Bernard Corden says
Dear V,
I enjoyed your response it took me back to the infamous Lewis Powell memo in the early 1970s and the corporate call to arms with Bryce Harlow (Procter and Gamble) John D Harper (Alcoa) and William J Baroody Jr and many others.
More recently, the performance of Boeing under Dennis Muilenberg and the FAA provides plenty of evidence covering your concerns
Rob Long says
Caldini is at best a starter and I wouldn’t expect either associations in safety to have a clue about such, the AIHS BoK is evidence of that.
Rob Long says
I don’t think Caldini’s 6 come even close to the nature of social psychological influences, there are hundreds. You are on the money with the culture of safety as ‘cancel culture’. There is nothing more important to Safety than ensuring the politics of who is in and out of the sacred fold. All dissent must be demonised, all questioning excommunicated in the quest for full political compliance, anchored to the delusional shibboleth of zero.
Rob Long says
If there is one thing safety knows little of, its language, linguistics and especially metaphor. I doubt that this NSCA presentation has any idea that roots are rhizomes, matty wicked tangles of roots that have no definitive cause. The only way to really tackle rick in a holistic way is to adopt a Transdisciplinary approach and this certainty is far from that. Unless one understands risk as a wicked problem, one will always come up with these kinds of things that are: simplistic, black and white and behaviourist but the safety hordes will lap it up as the new best thing in delusion.
Crista Vesel says
I always question the tree metaphor, such as finding “the roots” of a problem (here centered in behaviorism). If you think of a tree, there is a lot feeding it that goes beyond the roots. The soil, minerals, water, sunlight… A person’s behaviors never exist alone, without other influences.
V says
I have read Cialdini’s 6 principles of influences and know them to be incredibly on point. One problem is trying to introduce them, or any other concept, theory or even evidence, outside of the Safety orthodoxy, is met with a “cancel culture” type of mentality. Anything, I mean anything, that threatens the Totalitarian Safety leadership hold on power, cannot be allowed to exist. You have evidence that defining safety by a number dehumanizes people? No, that cannot be allowed, and therefore YOU cannot be allowed. In the United States our current group running the Federal government is steeped in this same type of mentality; any idea or language that threatens their power, must be canceled. This makes sense for any ideology that cannot defend itself based on anything other than propaganda; cults rely on fear to rule in this same manner. Control the language and you control thought; control thought and you control the people. THAT is why the Safety industry,will NEVER change. It is not about the well being of people; it has not been for decades. Its about power. The only real question is how much of this does the orthodoxy in Safety really understand; are the ignorant or evil? Or something in between, maybe apathetic?
Bernard Corden says
I wonder if Cialdini’s six principles of influence gets any airtime