Overcoming Recency and Proximity Bias in Combustible Dust Safety Training

In the world of combustible dust safety, one of the biggest challenges in educating others lies in overcoming biases—specifically, recency bias and proximity bias.?

These biases can significantly impact how people perceive and respond to safety information, which can, in turn, affect their ability to manage combustible dust hazards effectively. In this article, we'll explore these biases, their implications, and strategies to address them in safety training.

Understanding Recency Bias

Recency bias is a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historical ones. People tend to give more importance to events that have occurred recently while discounting the significance of older incidents. This bias is especially prevalent in combustible dust safety, where historical incidents are often used as case studies to teach and inform. However, incidents that occurred even as recently as two years ago can start to feel irrelevant to some, leading to dangerous complacency.

For example, you might hear someone say, "We’ve been running this process for years without any issues—why would something happen now?" This mindset, often rooted in recency bias, can prevent individuals from fully appreciating the risks they face. High-profile incidents, like the Imperial Sugar explosion, may be well-documented and provide valuable lessons. However, as time passes, they lose their immediate impact, making it harder for learners to connect with the severity of these risks.

Understanding Proximity Bias

Proximity bias refers to the tendency for people to discount the significance of events that happen far away from them—geographically or otherwise. Even if a wood pellet mill in another part of the world has the same setup as their facility, individuals may dissociate from the incident, thinking it won’t happen to them because of the distance or differences in context.

Both of these biases are particularly challenging because many of the best case studies and in-depth investigations take years to complete and may come from all regions of the world.

Due to recency bias, their value as educational tools may be diminished by the time they are available. Due to proximity bias, using these case studies for learners worldwide reduces the impact the case study has on them and the learning they achieve.

As educators in combustible dust safety, this poses a unique challenge: how do we ensure that our audience connects with the material and understands its relevance to their own situation?

Addressing These Biases in Training

To effectively address these biases, it’s crucial to make the training content as relevant and immediate as possible.?

This is one reason why we created and managed the Dust Safety Science Incident Database. By maintaining a global database of incidents, we can provide up-to-date information that resonates more with learners, whether they’re in Kentucky, India, South America, or South Africa.

When designing a training module, it’s often more impactful to start with recent incidents, ideally from the same year and industry as the audience. It is tragic to say, but a dust collection explosion that happened last week down the street will have a much more significant impact than a multi-fatality incident from years ago in another state.

Setting the program up this way helps the learners feel the immediacy and relevance of the information. As the training progresses, more detailed case studies can be introduced, covering specific topics like hazard assessment and explosion protection. These in-depth studies, while critical, are best positioned later in the training when the learners have already connected with the material.

Conclusion

Recency bias and proximity bias are significant obstacles in teaching combustible dust safety, but they can be overcome with thoughtful training design.

By focusing on recent and locally relevant incidents, educators can create a more engaging and effective learning experience that resonates with their audience.

At DustEx Research Ltd., we’re committed to making safety training as impactful as possible.?

If you’re interested in learning more about how we structure our programs to overcome these challenges, or if you’d like to discuss how our training can help your team, just direct message me the word “training” and I will let you know what training options we have available.

Until next week, stay safe and keep pushing forward!

Chris Cloney

Managing Director, DustEx Research Ltd.

DustSafetyScience.com