Have you ever looked up at a cloud and seen an image? Maybe it looked like a rabbit or a dog or some other creature. Our brains know it is just a cloud, but our imagination sees something else. This is a cognitive bias known as pareidolia. Where we create meaning where there is none. Our brains struggle with incomplete things, so they will always seek to make sense of what they see. This is an important bias to be aware of because it affects safety. This is because it can lead us to make poor or wrong decisions.

But what are biases, and how do they work? Biases are the shortcuts our brains use to help us function in real time. If our brains were constantly operating in conscious mode, we would be exhausted and hungry all the time. Our brains use enormous amounts of energy to operate in conscious mode.

So, to combat this extreme energy use, our brains slip into unconscious mode most of the time to conserve energy. We run on autopilot. I am sure you have all had the experience of driving along and passing through an intersection with traffic lights, then suddenly thinking, ‘Did I just run a red light?’ Or drove away from home and then questioned if you turned off the oven, locked the door or closed the garage. We do all these simple actions in our subconscious brain, so we don’t recall the action in our conscious brain.

Our biases are built from our experiences. We learn to act in certain ways and then program that as a kind of bias for future energy-saving use. We become so used to acting in a certain way that we don’t need to be conscious to do it. Sometimes we will make a mistake, but mostly we function perfectly well in this mode. We go about our daily lives conserving our brain energy and doing our work. These biases allow our brains to make quick decisions without thinking. But as I said, sometimes we make mistakes because bias has led us in the wrong direction. There could be many reasons for this. There might be incomplete information, and our pareidolia bias tries to make meaning by filling in the gaps, but fills them in wrong. Or our brain might misinterpret the signs and think the situation is different.

So, how does all this impact safety in our workplace? Every day in operational environments, we are required to identify and interpret data to make decisions. This data is not always complete, so we need to exercise judgment to interpret it. If our biases take over while we are on autopilot, we can misinterpret this data and assign false meaning. Pareidolia can take over, and we start to create meaning where none exists. We reach an incorrect conclusion and apply an incorrect solution.  Our minds will always seek to make meaning of the world around us. If we are only seeing a small portion of the information, it is easy to fill the gaps with the wrong assumptions. Our energy-saving brain hack of working in subconscious mode trips us up.

We need to challenge the data to make good decisions. This means we need to switch our brains from subconscious to conscious mode. Our brains respond well to questioning. They can’t help but try to answer a question. So, asking ourselves out loud, ‘what am I missing?’ or ‘what is the data telling me?’ can help bring our brain into consciousness, where we can think logically about the problem rather than allowing shortcuts to take place. It will help us make better decisions.

The next time you see an animal in the clouds, or a pattern in data, ask yourself what meaning you are applying. What assumptions have you made to create your meaning? Do those assumptions still seem valid when you critically challenge them? There might be a trend, or it might just be a rabbit.