Ep 13: Do near misses increase risky decision making?

Conventional wisdom suggests investigating and circulating knowledge of near misses. These 'free lessons', so it goes, are supposed to help us learn without the need for injury or damage.

But can near misses also lead to a desensitisation of risk over time, focusing on the achieved success, rather than the near loss?

Today's paper is from Dillon, R. L., & Tinsley, C. H. (2016). Near-miss events, risk messages, and decision making.  Environment Systems and Decisions, 36(1), 34-44.

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Intro/Output "Dark Synth Wave" by ElephantGreen(PixaBay.com)

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Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Common logic and decades of safety practise tells us that
reporting and investigating nearmisses makes us safer.
It makes sense, right? If we learn from the almost
disasters, we prevent the real ones.
But what if that common wisdom, when applied in certain ways,
actually creates a dangerous blind spot?
Good day everyone. I'm Ben Hutchinson and this is

(00:27):
Safe as a podcast dedicated to the thrifty analysis of safety,
risk, and performance. Visit safetyinsights.org for
more research. Today we're exploring a 2016
paper from Dylan and Tinsley called Near Miss Events, Risk
Messages and Decision Making, Publishing Environment, Systems
and Decisions. They studied how near miss

(00:49):
events and their reporting mightactually increase our exposure
to risk, rather than always improving learning and safety.
What were their methods? Well, it used 2 experiments with
participants. Experiment one was the cruise
dilemma. In the first experiment,
participants read a scenario about a planned cruise
potentially being impacted by a hurricane.

(01:11):
They were randomly put into one of three groups, the control
group said. The control group was told that
the cruisers can be diverted by bad weather, but they weren't
given any info about past hurricanes in the area.
Simple and neutral, there was the resilient Near Miss group.
Here, participants were told about hurricane forecasts, but
crucially, their last three trips were not diverted.

(01:33):
This is where people perceive that disaster was successfully
avoided, often leading them to discount future warnings.
The third group, the Vulnerable Near Miss group, So a similar
scenario, but this time a close friend had their crews diverted
due to a storm. This scenario is where people
perceive a disaster came very close and it encourages them to
seek out future warnings and take mitigating actions.

(01:57):
So what did they find? Well, in experiment one, when
participants had information about a priori near miss, like a
cruise almost been diverted, butthey had no specific information
about problems that almost occurred.
So the resilient near miss group, they overwhelmingly chose
to take the risky option to continue the cruise as planned.
This was compared to both the control group and those in the

(02:20):
vulnerable near miss condition. Interestingly, thinking the
likelihood of problems was lowerdid lead people to choose the
cruise, but the type of near misinformation didn't actually
change their perception of how likely a problem was, they just
felt differently about the risk.Also, risk seeking personalities

(02:40):
were predictably more likely to choose riskier options, but this
trait didn't interact with the near misinformation itself.
Crucially, the type of near missinfo did impact general
optimism. Those with resilient near miss
info seeing averted disaster as a positive, You know, we handled
it. We're more optimistic and more

(03:01):
likely to go on a cruise. What did they find in experiment
too? This expanded on the resilient
near miss data. Looking at how framing of
uncertainty or danger influencesdecisions.
Found that when near misinformation highlighted the
likelihood of a negative event or its potential consequences,
people were more likely to plan mitigation actions, especially

(03:23):
compared to receiving no specific risk messaging.
This suggests that the messagingmatters.
So what do we make of the findings?
So these experiments strongly suggest that nearness events and
how we report them may contribute to a state of
heightened risk, the near failures or invertedly, A dull
perception of risk, the near successes or how we narrowly

(03:46):
created success. Perhaps our decisions can slowly
drift towards the margins of safety over time.
Why? Because some near misses
actually dampen our feelings of vulnerability to harm, rather
than sensitising us to them. The author's suggestion for
emergency managers and safety leaders to overcome this
negative impact is that when we communicate about a near miss,

(04:09):
we should highlight how the event was almost a bad event,
emphasising as a near failure rather than a near success.
People with prior near miss infothat highlights the averted
disaster as a success are less likely to opt out of a
potentially hazardous trip the near success.
This isn't necessarily because they update their logical
estimates of the likelihood there was no evidence of this,

(04:32):
but rather they feel differentlyabout the statistical risk,
becoming more optimistic and less cautious.
Ultimately, these findings are just to rethink how we learn
from near misses, ensuring they truly sharpen our awareness of
risk, not dull it Now. In fact, these authors found
these results to be fairly stable across other
organisations and roles also, sothey have other research that

(04:55):
confirms this. So this doesn't mean we
shouldn't report, discuss or acton near miss events, but should
consider how we frame them, particularly within the sphere
of safety critical domains. There's also a lot more stuff to
learn from daily work that doesn't rely on rare events, but
that likely has its own caveats too.
So limitations really. One of the core limitations is

(05:18):
that they only looked at intended behaviour rather than
actual behaviour. But in saying that, intended
behaviour has been shown in other work to be a good
predictor of actual behaviour. So in summary, according to this
research, we should emphasise the near failure rather than the
near success. That's it on Safe As I'm Ben

(05:40):
Hutchinson. Please help share, rate and
review, and check out Safety Insightsorg for more research.
Finally, feel free to support Safe As by shouting a coffee
link in the show notes.