HF Day 3: The Second Cognitive Revolution (an SRE perspective)

Legacy Tree (ScienceDirect.com — “Reflecting on Jens Rasmussen’s legacy…”)

This is the third of a series of posts about the “Critical Thinking in Safety” lab put on by Lund University in Lund, Sweden as part of their Human Factors in System Safety MSc. You can find part one (and an index) here.

Note: An earlier version of this article stated that Heinrich favored predictive methods, and that he was the official source of the “if you reduce the number of accidents, you reduce the number of incidents” concept. This updated version has corrected both points. 2/8/2019

Day 3 began with a brief summary of some key points from different schools of thought on how to be safe (or reliable!). Here they are:

Behaviorism

• Input →Output
• Stimuli →Response
• Sticks & carrots
• Safety and competence measured on output alone
• The mind is a black box

Information Processing

• Cognitive Psychology