How an invisible gorilla can help learning from accidents
Ian Pemberton
Managing Director at Human Focus ? Chartered Ergonomist ? Author of "Achieving Health & Safety Training Success" ? Globally Trusted Authority on Workplace Safety Training and Behavior Change
If a gorilla walked out in front of you, you would noticed it, wouldn’t you? Well, this is exactly what researchers tested in the early 2000s. They created situations where people were given something to focus on.??Whilst their attention was focused on the given task, they arranged for someone in a gorilla suit to walk past right in front of them.
What do you think they discovered?
Well, a significant number of the test subjects didn’t see the gorilla! What this shows is that there are lots of reasons why people might not see the obvious. And this has profound implications for the design of work systems and learning from accidents.
In the short video below I discuss this phenomena in more detail.
If this type of human factor is of interest to you, and you’d like to harness this type of understanding to get better learning from your accident and near miss reports, attend my ongoing series of free CPD webinars, How Better Learning From Accidents and Near Misses Transforms Safety Culture Part 7, October 19th, 2PM BST.?
?Register today and get immediate access to Parts 1->6 of this ground breaking series of webinars.