SafetyInsights.org

Using a mixed-reality environment, this study explored the effects of occupational task stressors on worker situational awareness and risk decision making. 33 civil engineering, construction management and construction engineering students conducted the simulated work tasks (note the limitation of using students). Stress was induced via time pressure and mental demands and measured via several objective… Continue reading Impacts of Stress on Workers’ Risk-Taking Behaviors: Cognitive Tunneling and Impaired Selective Attention

Another on psychological safety (PS) to be posted in the near future. Once again it’s in healthcare (as is much of the interesting research…) It’s a pretty specific area also – ICU teamwork. Although they found that higher PS was associated with greater *perceived* teamwork performance, they didn’t find evidence that showed a relationship between… Continue reading Psychological safety and team performance

Just summarised a paper that explored the role of leader feedback-seeking (asking for feedback) or feedback-sharing (openly sharing/discussing their own weaknesses or feedback) had on psychological safety. Interestingly, feedback-seeking wasn’t found to impact psychological safety. And in some cases, leaders responded to the feedback with defensiveness or discounted the feedback. In contrast, leaders who shared… Continue reading Feedback-sharing and psychological safety

This explored workarounds as a social phenomenon as opposed to just an individual one, arguing that they are influenced and propagated socially (socially contagious) and can result in a workaround climate. This paper involved a literature review and then two preliminary studies. Workarounds are informal and idiosyncratic approaches to circumnavigate a process block, e.g. an… Continue reading The Social Construction of Workarounds

Using discourse analysis of transcripts from 34 simulated incident interviews, this study explored the role of a “no blame ideology” on the investigation process. Providing background, they note: Note: For just an 11-page paper, it is packed to the brim with findings, so I can only provide a few key points. Results Some key findings… Continue reading The unintended consequences of no blame ideology for incident investigation in the US construction industry

This study explored how availability bias, outcome bias, and hindsight bias can influence pilots’ perceptions of past events, which in turn may affect their perception of events yet to occur. They also explored the influence of ‘close calls’ (near hits). Two separate study protocols were run, with 142 pilots in protocol 1 and 62 in… Continue reading Understanding the past: Investigating the role of availability, outcome, and hindsight bias and close calls in visual pilots’ weather-related decision making

Not a summary, but an interesting study exploring the role of outcome knowledge and hindsight bias on judgements towards a student who took her own life, and the efforts a professor should have taken to provide assistance to that student via hypothetical scenarios in college students and adults. This study found that outcome knowledge (of… Continue reading Outcome knowledge, hindsight bias and suicide victim blaming

I just summarised a really interesting paper exploring the role of “no blame” (if that’s ever truly a thing…) in construction investigations. Summary posted in the next week or two, but it’s open access so you can read the full paper yourself. Interestingly, they observed a phenomenon which they called ‘New blame’. New blame was… Continue reading No blame ideology in investigations and ‘New blame’ (and the potential influence of HOP)

Drawing on a grounded theory approach and a mental model focus, this explored why electricians work on energised apparatus. 60 electricians provided in-depth interviews. Results Data indicated that electrical work is cognitively demanding and working energised is not a simple yes/no choice, but rather strongly influenced by a range of factors. Including: the belief that… Continue reading Using grounded theory and mental modeling to understand influences on electricians’ safety decisions: Toward an integrated theory of why electricians work energized

These two studies explored the links between working in construction and exposure to construction dusts on respiratory cancer and COPD. The first study from Wang et al. looked at data from >25k US workers and including >5k deaths. After adjusting for smoking and demographics, construction workers were nearly twice as likely to die from respiratory… Continue reading Construction dust, silica, asbestos etc. and risk of respiratory cancer and COPD