Cognitive Bias in OHS Investigation: The Biasing Power of Source Identity
The influence of an information source's identity can significantly bias occupational health and safety investigators' judgments.
- By Carla L. MacLean, Surveer Boparai
- May 31, 2024
Social media influencers, marketers, and TV “experts” understand that who a person is, not just what they say, is influential. The persuasiveness of an information source has important implications for all decisions, including those made in occupational health and safety (OHS) investigations. This article explores the persuasive power of the identity of an information source and how it can shape an OHS investigator's understanding of events.
Information Source and Bias
Identity is ubiquitous and people rarely consider the impact it has on how information is processed. Equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) training is on the rise globally, and this raises awareness of how identity shapes interactions. Nevertheless, an individual's characteristics remain a robust source of influence in decision-making, mainly because the bias that results from them usually occurs outside the decision-maker's awareness. Bias is not an ethical issue — honest, hard working and well-intentioned decision-makers can make biased decisions.
Psychologists who study dual process theories of cognition offer an explanation of how and why the identity of an information source nudges our choices in one direction or another. As author Daniel Kahneman explains, people tend to think at two speeds, fast and slow. Thinking slow is deliberative, time-consuming and effortful. For instance, when people try to speak a foreign language. Thinking fast, on the other hand, relies on experience, association and expertise to simplify the decision-making task, make good assumptions and navigate with minimal cognitive effort. People experience fast thinking when they speak their native language.
The identity of a person is a piece of information that provides the decision-maker with a “fast” cognitive shortcut about the quality of the information being offered to them. For instance, an individual is more likely to accept car advice from a trusted mechanic than from a car salesman. If one’s understanding of information is altered because of who provided it, it is a biased judgment. Bias is the systematic deviation from what an evidenced-based, objective judgment of the information would determine. Bias is bidirectional, meaning it can lead to rendering a judgment moreso or less than what the evidence shows.
This article originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.