Impacts of Stress on Workers’ Risk-Taking Behaviors: Cognitive Tunneling and Impaired Selective Attention

Using a mixed-reality environment, this study explored the effects of occupational task stressors on worker situational awareness and risk decision making.

33 civil engineering, construction management and construction engineering students conducted the simulated work tasks (note the limitation of using students). Stress was induced via time pressure and mental demands and measured via several objective measures (see image below).

Providing background:

·????????Stress can be defined in several ways, including an individual’s cognitive, psychological and behavioural responses to external or internal demand

·????????Task stressors includes time pressure (working faster or work intensification) and mental demands (doing simultaneous tasks)

·????????Stressors can amplify risky decisions, and affect cognitive skills like situational awareness, such as failing to identify, comprehend and project future risks

·????????Endsley’s three levels of situational awareness (SA) was used in this study. Level 1: identifying hazards in the environment, level 2: comprehending the risks associated with the hazards, level 3: projecting associated consequences and actions to remain safe

·????????They note that previous studies “identified decision complexity … uncertainty … time pressure … and information overload … as the most destructive task stressors within occupations” (p3)

·????????Stress can affect the decision process, and result in a relocation of attentional resources to specific details in the environment for subsequent processing and away from other details

·????????That is, task stressors “affects the balance between selective/focused attention (focus on one hazard) and distributed attention (distributed attention between more than one hazard” (p3)

·????????This phenomenon where the attentional field narrows to specific elements, while overlooking other important elements, is known as cognitive tunnelling

·????????Moreover, “increasing levels of stress can disrupt individuals’ ability to prioritize hazardous information in the environment and lead to a misplaced focus on one set of information, a dynamic known as selective attention” (p3)

Probably no surprises from this data, but it’s another ref to add to your list.

Results

Overall, the data indicated that:

·????????High stress levels triggered by task stressors adversely affect one’s cognitive processes

·????????Attentional distribution is affected such that excessive stress led subjects to miss surrounding hazards, leading to impaired risk perception and increased risky decisions/actions

·????????Under stressful conditions, participants’ attention toward potential hazards narrowed as they shifted more of their attention toward nonhazardous areas

·????????Task stressors can “outstrip subjects’ limited cognitive resources” and thus, “within dynamic and hazardous environments where workers are required to remain situationally aware to maintain their safety performance, high stress levels can negatively affect SA factors, including hazard identification, comprehension, and projection” (p9)

·????????When stressed, the participants’ neglected critical hazardous elements in their work areas, instead choosing to focus on peripheral information; indicating attentional tunneling

The authors state that “Once individuals get trapped in attentional tunneling, they focus on certain aspects of their surrounding environment without scanning for other important features” (p9). That is, once a person’s cognitive resources are overloaded, their alertness became diminished and their attentional tunnelling increased; leading to a failure to properly scan their surrounding environment for hazards and allocate necessary attention to these hazards.

As stress levels increased and people experienced higher demands, their ability to properly pay attention to high-risk elements diminished; indicating that “individuals cannot process all information in an environment due to limitations in cognitive capacity” (p10).

For time pressure, participants shifted from safely completing their primary work task to simply completing the work task within the time limit – increasing both performance variability (errors in the goals), and in the most stressful scenario, exposed to arc flash incidents.

Under the highest stress scenario, “stress impeded SA and appeared to increase subjects’ risk-taking behaviors by focusing on gains (incentive) and ignoring the loss (likelihood of experiencing arc flash)” (p10).

Discussing the findings, it’s said that stressed decision-makers are more likely to take riskier options “since they process fewer alternatives—most especially those alternatives containing higher values—to make a decision” (p11).

Several limitations were present – notably using student engineers rather than experienced linespeople, and using a simulated environment.

Link in comments.

Authors: Pooladvand, S., & Hasanzadeh, S. (2023). Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 149(8), 04023060.