Fatigue and theories of resources: The energetic metaphor of the mind functioning might be reconsidered

Abstract

Industrial accidents are explained often by saying that people are fatigued. Traditionally, Theories of resources have been used to explain this relation between fatigue and accidents. Those theories predict that when there is a lack on mental resources people are more prone to err. They also predict that mental fatigue depends on how long a person has been performing a task. Therefore, they predict that more time performing a task would let to more accidents. However, data from industry contradicts this hypothesis. When people are supposed to be more fatigued (i.e. at the end of the week) they have fewer accidents. This paper present some data from one ongoing research project aim to explain these results about industry accidents. Our results suggest that we should review the traditional theories of resources and propose new one that include some compensatory mechanism that supply extra resources when is needed.