scope:

Preface

Psychology influences every aspect of our lives, including our safety and health; and psychology can be used to benefit almost every aspect of our lives, including our safety and health.

So what is "psychology" anyway?

My copy of The American Heritage Dictionary (Second College Edition, Copyright 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Company) defines psychology as

1. The science of mental processes and behavior.

2. The emotional and behavioral characteristics of an individual, group, or activity (page 1000). Similarly, the two definitions in the New Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Copyright 1989 by Merriam-Webster, Inc.) are

1. The science of mind and behavior.

2. The mental and behavioral characteristics of an individual or group (page 587).

In both dictionaries, the first definition of "psychology" uses the term "science" and refers to behavioral and mental processes. Behaviors are the outside, objective, and observable aspects of people; mental or mind reflects our inside, subjective, and unobservable characteristics. Science implies the application of the scientific method or the objective and systematic analysis and interpretation of reliable observations of natural or experimental phenomena.

So what should you expect from a Handbook on the Psychology of Safety? Obviously, such a book should show how psychology influences the safety and health of people. To be useful, it should explain ways to apply psychology to improve safety and health. This is, in fact, my purpose for writing this text-to teach you how to use psychology to both explain and reduce personal injury.

As a science of mind and behavior, psychology is actually a vast field of numerous subdisciplines. Areas covered in a standard college course in introductory psychology, for example, include research methods, physiological foundations, sensation and perception, language and thinking, consciousness and memory, learning, motivation and emotion, human development, intelligence, personality, psychological disorders, treatment of mental disorders, social thought and behavior, environmental psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, and human factors engineering. This book does not cover all of these areas of psychology, only those directly relevant to understanding and influencing safetyrelated behaviors and attitudes. In addition, my coverage of information within any one subdiscipline of psychology is not comprehensive but focuses on those aspects directly relevant to reducing injury in organizational and community settings.

This information will help you improve safety and health in any setting, from your home to the workplace and every community location in between. You can apply the knowledge gained from reading this book in all aspects of your daily life. Most organized safetyimprovement efforts occur in work environments, however, because that is where the exposure to hazardous conditions and at-risk behavior is most obvious. As a result, most (but not all) of my illustrations and examples use an industrial context. My hope is that you will see direct relevance of the principles and procedures to domains beyond the workplace.

Apsychology of safety must be based on rigorous research, not common sense or intuition. This is what science is all about. Much of the psychology in self-help paperbacks, audiotapes, and motivational speeches is not founded on programmatic research but is presented because it sounds good and will "sell." The psychology in this Handbook was not selected on the basis of armchair hunches but rather from the relevant research literature. In sum, the information in this Handbook is consistent with a literal definition of its title- the psychology of safety.

The human element of occupational health and safety is an extremely popular topic at national and regional safety conferences. Safety leaders realize that reducing injuries below current levels requires increased attention to human factors. Engineering interventions and government policy have made their mark. Now, it is time to include a focus on the human dynamics of injury prevention-the psychology of safety.

Most attempts to deal with the human aspects of safety have been limited in scope. Many trainers and consultants claim to have answers to the human side of safety, but their solutions are too often impractical, shortsighted, or illusory. To support their particular program, consultants, authors, and conference speakers often give unfair and inaccurate criticism of alternative methods.

Tools from behavior-based safety have been criticized in an attempt to justify a focus on people's attitudes or values. In contrast, promoters of behavior-based safety have ridiculed a focus on attitudes as being too subjective, unscientific, and unrealistic. Both behavior- and attitude-oriented approaches to injury prevention have been faulted in order to vindicate a systems or culture-based approach. The truth of the matter is that both behaviors and attitudes require attention in order to develop large-scale and long-term improvement in people's safety and health.

There are a number of books on the market that offer advice regarding the human element of occupational safety. Unfortunately, many of these texts offer a limited perspective. I have found none comprehensive and practical enough to show how to integrate behavior- and attitude-based perspectives for a system-wide total culture transformation. This Handbook was written to do just that and, in this regard, it is one of a kind.

Simply put, behavioral science principles provide the basic tools and procedures for building an improved safety system. However, the people in a work culture need to accept and use these behavior-based techniques appropriately. This is where a broader perspective is needed, including insight regarding more subjective concepts like attitude, value, and thought processes. Recall that psychology includes the scientific study of both mind and behavior. Therefore, a practical handbook on the psychology of safety needs to teach science-based and feasible approaches to change what people think (attitude) and do (behavior) in order to achieve a Total Safety Culture.

I refer to a Total Safety Culture throughout this text as the ultimate vision of a safetyimprovement mission. In a Total Safety Culture, everyone feels responsible for safety and pursues it on a daily basis. At work, employees go beyond "the call of duty" to identify environmental hazards and at-risk behaviors. Then, they intervene to correct them. Safe work practices are supported with proper recognition procedures. In a Total Safety Culture, safety is not a priority that gets shifted according to situational demands. Rather, safety is a value linked to all situational priorities.

Obviously, building a Total Safety Culture requires a long-term continuous improvement process. It involves cultivating constructive change in both the behaviors and attitudes of everyone in the culture. This book provides you with principles and procedures to make this happen. Applying what you read here might not result in a Total Safety Culture. However, it is sure to make a beneficial difference in your own safety and health, and in the safety and health of others you choose to help.

I refer to helping others as "actively caring." This book shows you how to increase the quality and quantity of your own and others' actively caring behavior. Indeed, actively caring is the key to safety improvement. The more people actively caring for the safety and health of others, the less remote is the achievement of our ultimate vision-a Total Safety Culture.