Construction Safety and Human Factors PDF Fall 2024

Fall 2024, CivE709B Construction Safety and Human Factors 4. Heuristics’ Influence on Construction Safety Gaang Lee, PhD. Assistant Professor Hole School of Construction...

Fall 2024, CivE709B Construction Safety and Human Factors 4. Heuristics’ Influence on Construction Safety Gaang Lee, PhD. Assistant Professor Hole School of Construction Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering University of Alberta U TTENTIVE  Situational vs. Exceptional Violations Exceptional violation: "When a situation arises in which the rule no longer serves its original purpose, a worker might think that there is no point in following the rule and therefore violates it. This is an exceptional violation. For example, on a site where it's required to wear a harness while working, a worker is doing a job in a very confined ceiling space where the harness keeps getting caught on pipes or ducts, not only reducing efficiency but also potentially threatening safety. So, the worker removes the harness to continue working." Situational violation: This type of violation occurs when the rule works well for its original purpose, but the situation makes it challenging to follow the rule. For example, on a site where it's required to wear a harness, there are 20 harnesses available but 22 workers on that day. Due to this situation, two workers can decide to violate the rule. This is the situational violation. Unlike the exceptional violation scenario above, the lack of harnesses does not undermine the purpose of the rule itself, which is still valid. U TTENTIVE 2  (Recap) Construction Workers’ Safety Cognitive Model Obtaining Understanding Perceiving Selecting Taking Information Information Responses Responses Action Searching/detecting Identifying hazards Producing Selecting Info. related to & estimating risks actionable responses potential hazards responses U TTENTIVE Fang, D., Zhao, C., and Zhang, M. (2016). "A cognitive model of construction workers’ unsafe behaviors." Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 142(9), 04016039. 3  Different Decision-Making Engines Workers Use.. Heuristics: Cognitively Cheap & Experience-driven Ways U TTENTIVE Figure: istockphoto.com 4  Outline Basics of Heuristics What they are Why we evolved to depend on them Examples of Heuristics Negative Impacts of Heuristics in Construction Safety Strategies to Alleviate Heuristics' Negative Impacts Strategies to Leverage Heuristics for Construction Safety U TTENTIVE 5  What is a Heuristic Heuristic: Process by which humans use mental shortcuts to arrive at decisions (Tversky and Kahneman 1974) - Rather than finding optimality via cognitive reasoning, finding approximation via induction or analogy - When: time pressure, complexity, uncertainty, lack of expertise, or threat, for very routine things - From the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” System 1 (fast, intuitive, automatic), compared to System 2 (slow, deliberate, conscious, intentional effort) - Fine, but not that accurate.. - Used by animals, and nowadays even by machines U TTENTIVE Figure: Ted talk by Dr. Gilbert 6 U TTENTIVE Figure: thedecisionlab.com 7  Why are we using Heuristics? in our genes, Cognitive miser (Stanovich 2009) - Human tendency to reason in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways - Adaptation to save limited cognitive resources (attention, WM), for more taxing tasks U TTENTIVE Figure: serviziqualificati.com / ieltsonlinetests.com 8  Heuristics: Important Part of “Learning” “To think (and hopefully learn), the brain requires well- functioning Attention systems and well-functioning Memory systems. Attention and Memory systems require lots of energy, which we measure as cognitive load.” - Tokuhama-Espinosa & Nelson, 2019 The Origins of Bias in the Brain - U TTENTIVE 9  Examples of Heuristic Models U TTENTIVE 10  Examples of Heuristic Models U TTENTIVE 11  Examples of Heuristic Models (Cont.) U TTENTIVE 12  Outline Basics of Heuristics What they are Why we evolved to depend on them Examples of Heuristics Negative Impacts of Heuristics in Construction Safety Strategies to Alleviate Heuristics' Negative Impacts Strategies to Leverage Heuristics for Construction Safety U TTENTIVE 13  Group Discussion Bring unsafe behavior cases mainly due to each of the heuristics Recognition heuristic (Goldstein and Gigerenzer 2002) - If one of two objects is recognized, then infer that the recognized object has the higher value Fluency heuristic (Jacoby and Brooks 1984) - if one object is processed more fluently, faster, or more smoothly, this object has the higher value Affect heuristic (Finucane et al. 2000) - subconscious process that shortens the decision-making process based on “emotion” Availability heuristic (Keller et al. 2006) - relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind Representativeness heuristic (Goldstein and Gigerenzer 2002) - by assessing how similar it is to an existing mental prototype Default heuristic (Goldstein and Gigerenzer 2002) - tendency for an agent to generally accept the default option U TTENTIVE 14  Combinations of Biased Experiences & Heuristics Construction: Efficiency Tension: Vivid hard to manage, Accident: less vivid Tensions related to time/cost are typical Availability Heuristic to focus more on efficiency over safety Efficiency Tension: Negative emotion Accident: less attachment to emotion > Relatively, experiencing Affect Heuristic to focus more on accidents is rare efficiency over safety for individuals + Representativeness Heuristic: assessing tasks based on previously experienced ones, not considering specific conditions U TTENTIVE 15  Risk Habituation from the Heuristic Perspective Habituation: decreased responses toward a specific stimulus due to repeated sensory stimulation (Rankin et al. 2009). - Similar terms: - Vigilance decrement: losing concentration to a specific stimulus for a long period of time due to reduced attention resource (Kryter 2013) - Desensitization: a specific type of habituation, referring to “emotional” habituation (Watts 1971) - Two categories: - Emotional habituation (i.e., desensitization) - Sensory habituation U TTENTIVE Figure: ico.org.uk 16  Outline Basics of Heuristics What they are Why we evolved to depend on them Examples of Heuristics Their Negative Impacts of Heuristics in Construction Safety Strategies to Alleviate Heuristics' Negative Impacts Strategies to Leverage Heuristics for Construction Safety U TTENTIVE 17  Two Strategies 1. Prevent/Alleviate Heuristics - Heuristics govern under time pressure, complexity, uncertainty, lack of expertise - So, alleviating/removing those conditions will work by clear guidelines, training, & better management 2. Modify Heuristics (Offset the biased experience) - Safety incentives: positive emotion with happily vivid reward scenes Q. Any other ways to offset the biased experience? U TTENTIVE 18  Virtual Reality (VR)-based Safety Training (Bhandari and Hallowell 2017; Kim et al. 2021) Beauty of VR: - Realistic & immersive experience with minimized chance of actual harm Approaches: - Regularly expose workers to virtual accidents with scenic features vivid enough to be incorporated in affect & availability heuristics Challenges: individual differences - Habituation level to the scenes might differ by person, which requires different levels of vividness among trainees.. U TTENTIVE 19  Outline Basics of Heuristics What they are Why we evolved to depend on them Examples of Heuristics Their Negative Impacts of Heuristics in Construction Safety Strategies to Alleviate Heuristics' Negative Impacts Strategies to Leverage Heuristics for Construction Safety U TTENTIVE 20  Assignment #2 Produce three field-applicable interventions to leverage heuristics to enhance construction safety - not negative approaches (offsetting negative impacts), but positive approaches (creating new positive impacts) - Does not need to be limited within heuristics covered today (e.g., anchoring heuristic) - tip: search “nudge” targeting System 1 Submission due: 2PM Oct 16th (on eClass) No more than 2 letter pages with normal margin, 1.5 space, 11pt Times New Romans, justified alignment, and your name U TTENTIVE 21