Speaking at the keynote theatre at the Safety & Health Expo 2017, Lewis of PDT Global said examples such as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig incident highlighted ‘a classic situation of how unconscious bias seriously affected the outcomes’, where professionals ignored – and even actively talked away – the counter-evidence.
He said we are constantly ‘looking for information that supports our belief.’
Lewis explained the various processes of the unconscious mind, and Freud’s infamous iceberg analysis of not seeing what is going on under the water.
He said: ‘The unconscious brain is incredibly fast. But the conscious brain is much slower, and requires much more effort.
‘If we are having to think about a lot of other information than just our job, we struggle.’
The unconscious can impact decision making, especially when a professional has different views from the organisational culture of a firm.
He said: ‘If you are slightly different, you have to work 8 to 10 times harder, and are seen as less capable because of your difference.
‘We look at difference in a very negative way.’
Lewis also said that we ‘need to define what good looks like’ – and that diversity wasn’t just about gender, sex or race in terms of how the unconscious bias works.
He said: ‘If I say different roles to you – CEO, a janitor – we will associate with those roles people and perceptions of what those look like in those roles. HR may be female, for example.
‘Skin colour just tells me their skin colour, but I will then make assumptions based on my brain and my background.
‘So when I see things outside of my mental model, I will view them very differently to how they are.’
Referencing Robin Ely of Harvard Business School, Lewis explained how macho culture was also endangering the workplace by creating a culture where people felt they ‘had to prove themselves’ rather than assess risk.
One example of cultural change was on an oil rig, he said, where without any new procedures, accidents were reduced by 84%.
He said: ‘It was by changing the ethos on the oil rig to making an outcome together in a safe way, and having a safe environment where it is okay to have a safe psychological space, where you can say “I’m not sure I know how to do that.”’
