Mutual forbearance,the representativeness heuristic and airline safety

This paper investigates the impact of airline crashes on fares and enplanement over the period 1984–1997. Empirical evidence suggests that none of the large carriers seem to initiate price wars with other large rivals involved in crashes, suggesting mutual forbearance. In contrast, small carriers raise their fares in response to small rivals’ crashes, perhaps commanding higher premiums due to their perceived higher safety level and in anticipation of consumer switching. Further estimation results suggest that only a small fraction of passengers form perceptions about crashes according to the representativeness heuristic. Moreover, large rivals’ crashes are associated with no consumer switching across other large carriers but are associated with enplanement losses for small carriers. The findings suggest that consumer perceptions raise important concerns about the challenges that carriers, especially the smaller ones, may face in depicting their true safety level to consumers whose vision may have been blurred by representativeness bias. Nevertheless, although consumers do not necessarily treat crashes as random events, large carriers may breathe a sigh of relief about the extent of consumer panic and overreaction.     

Conservation accidents

Eighty children aged between 4 years 2 months and 6 years 3 months were tested on length and number conservation, both when the transformation occured because of a direct action by the experimenter and when it happened ‘accidentally’ as the by-product of an activity directed towards a different goal. Fifty children conserved when the transformation was ‘accidental’, whereas only 13 were successful when it was intentional. These results are interpreted as evidence that characteristics of the experimenter's behaviour, in particular his actions towards the task materials, can influence children's interpretation of utterances by suggesting the experimenter is thinking about a different attribute from that specified linguistically. It is suggested that traditional procedures may underestimate children's cognitive abilities.     

On the relation between personality and job performance of airline pilots

The validity of a personality questionnaire for the prediction of job success of airline pilots is compared to validities of a simulator checkflight and of flying experience data. During selection, 274 pilots applying for employment with a European charter airline were examined with a multidimensional personality questionnaire (Temperature Structure Scales; TSS). Additionally, the applicants were graded in a simulator checkflight. On the basis of training records, the pilots were classified as performing at standard or below standard after about 3 years of employment in the hiring company. In a multiple-regression model, this dichotomous criterion for job success can be predicted with 73.8% accuracy through the simulator checkflight and flying experience prior to employment. By adding the personality questionnaire to the regression equation, the number of correct classifications increases to 79.3%. On average, successful pilots score substantially higher on interpersonal scales and lower on emotional scales of the TSS.     

Psychiatric disorders and motor vehicle accidents

The literature has often suggested a relationship between psychiatric illness and increased risk for motor vehicle accidents but few data exist, particularly those from prospective or case-controlled studies. The present study examined detailed accident and injury data from a large series (N = 1778) of motor vehicle crashes that included persons with diagnoses of psychiatric illnesses (n = 17); matched controls were also studied. As expected, drivers with psychiatric diagnoses used psychotropic medications more frequently than did controls. Drivers with psychiatric diagnoses did not have more frequent single-car crashes, unsafe speed or failure to yield violations, or less restraint use than did controls. Such drivers did less often drive motorcycles and tended to be less often cited for alcohol use. Implications of these results for efforts toward prevention and for further study are discussed.     

Making risks visible: Identifying and interpreting threats to airline flight safety

This research investigated how new or previously unrecognized risks are identified in organizations by risk managers. Managing risk is an increasingly important and widespread task in modern organizations, and the initial identification of risks is one of the key challenges of risk management. However, the psychological processes through which risks are initially identified and interpreted in organizations remain unclear. This paper presents a qualitative study of airline flight safety investigators. The interpretive processes, knowledge, and assumptions underlying risk identification in this setting were examined. The findings suggest that risks were initially identified through an interpretive process of finding gaps or inadequacies in investigators' current knowledge. Investigators engaged in interpretive processes that aimed to construct small moments of doubt, where current knowledge was found to be questionable or suspect in some way. These interpretive processes were underpinned by assumptions that organizational knowledge was inherently limited, partial, and fallible. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to theories of organizational sensemaking, decision‐making, and expertise, and practices of risk management.     

Nuclear accidents by design

The Accident (1955) by Dexter Masters, London: Faber & Faber, 1987, 336 pages, pb £4.95     

Safety locus of control and employees' accidents

This study further established the criterion-related validity of the Safety Locus of Control Scale. The safety scale was designed to predict employment applicants' propensity for on-the-job accidents. In this study, 283 hospital employees with moreexternal safety locus of control orientations reported significantly more occupational accidents, as well as more severe and costly injuries, than workers with moreinternal safety attitudes (p<.05 in all cases). Implications of these results are discussed.Research study presented at the 1988 Annual Conference of the Association of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behavior, Long Beach, California, October 26–29.     

Age and inhibition

Two experiments assess adult age differences in the extent of inhibition or negative priming generated in a selective-attention task. Younger adults consistently demonstrated negative priming effects; they were slower to name a letter on a current trial that had served as a distractor on the previous trial relative to one that had not occurred on the previous trial. Whether or not inhibition dissipated when the response to stimulus interval was lengthened from 500 ms in Experiment 1 to 1,200 ms in Experiment 2 depended upon whether young subjects were aware of the patterns across trial types. Older adults did not show inhibition at either interval. The age effects are interpreted within the Hasher-Zacks (1988) framework, which proposes inhibition as a central mechanism determining the contents of working memory and consequently influencing a wide array of cognitive functions.     

The power law for the perception of rotation by airline pilots

The purpose of this study was to determine the power laws for the perception of rotation about the three major body axes. Eighteen airline pilots made magnitude estimates of 5-sec pulses of nine angular accelerations having a range of acceleration x time of 10–150 deg/sec. The results showed that (1) the power law with an exponent of 1.4 describes the subjective motion of these pilots for all three major body axes, (2) the power law also describes the perception of motion for individual pilots with a substantial range of exponents, (3) there were significant correlations among the exponents for the three body axes, and (4) the data suggest that the power law over the wide range used may be more complex than implied by a formula with a single exponent.     

Seriousness of traffic accidents during work and commuting

This study examined the seriousness of traffic accidents that happen-either on work errands or during commuting. The article was based on three independently gathered data sets, of which two were based on compensation claims to the insurance companies (N=2,050 and N=17,108) and one on the interviews of victims (N=328). The traffic accidents at work led to a major injury or death more often than the commuting accidents. On the other hand, the work-related traffic accidents were less serious than the leisure-time traffic accidents. One explanation could be that heavy vehicles used during the working hours protected the drivers of these vehicles.     

How slips result in traffic conflicts and accidents

In this study subjects kept diaries about unintentional acts during driving. They were asked to record errors at skill-based level: slips and lapses. They also recorded the circumstances preceding these errors and the consequences for road safety. It was demonstrated how insight into the nature and antecedents of these ‘human errors’ contributes considerably to the understanding of road safety. By focusing on the conditions which control the occurrence of unintentional acts the study shows how these errors or their consequences can be controlled. A relationship was established between the specific conditions that evoke these slips and generic classes of condition that are conducive to errors: latent failure types. It is argued that in conditions controlled by latent failures cognitive processes produce not only skill-based errors but also rule- and knowledge-based errors. It is claimed that strategies to increase safety should be directed at these latent failures, rather than at the errors that follow from them.     

Alcohol and drug use and involvement in automobile accidents

This study examined a hypothesis first presented in the medical literature that persons who drink greater amounts of alcohol are more frequently involved in automobile accidents even though they were not under the influence of alcohol at the time of their accidents. Subjects were 130 undergraduates who contributed self-reports of automobile accidents in the preceding three years, near-miss accidents per week, and questionnaire measures of sociopathy, alcohol and drug use, and distortion (lie scale). No support was found for the alcohol hypothesis or a similar drug hypothesis. A very marginal link, however, was observed between accident involvement and sociopathic tendencies.     

Age and scholarly impact

The claim that older scientists generate research of lower quality than do younger scientists was tested through two analyses in which the age distribution of authors of frequently cited articles in psychology journals was compared with the age distribution of authors of low-impact articles published in the same journals. Most high-impact articles were published by relatively young psychologists, but so were most low-impact articles. When allowance was made for relative numerical representation, there was no evidence that publications from older scientists have less impact. Results are discussed in the context of methodological issues in evaluation of relations between age and scientific achievement.