Cultural Difference and Cognitive Biases as a Trigger of Critical Crashes or Disasters —Evidence from Case Studies of Human Factors Analysis

Abstract

On the basis of the analysis of past case studies of crashes or disasters, it has been clarified how cultural difference and cognitive biases become a trigger of serious crashes or disasters. Heuristic-based biases such as confirmation bias, groupthink, and social loafing surely appeared in the process of crash or disaster breakout. Overconfidence-bases biases such as illusion of control, fallacy of plan, and optimistic bias are also ubiquitous in the route to a critical crash or disaster. Moreover, framing biases contribute to the distorted decision making, and eventually turn into the main cause of critical crash or disaster. In this way, as well as human factors or ergonomics approaches for designing man-machine systems, the prevention and the deletion of cognitive biases are indispensable for the preventing serious crashes or disasters from occurring. Until now, the distortion of decision making has not been discussed from the cultural differences of way of thinking. As well as a variety of cognitive biases, cultural difference in behavior is expected to be important for understanding the root causes of critical crash or disaster. We found that cultural difference distorted judgment through case studies of critical crashes or disasters. It was also demonstrated that considering cultural difference, as well as cognitive biases, is important to prevent irrational and biased decision making from occurring in safety management.