Statistics of a Variety of Cognitive Biases in Decision Making in Crucial Accident Analyses

AbstractDue to bounded rationality, we cannot make decision rationally. Our cognitive information processing is conducted by System1 or System2. While System2 requires us to conduct effortful, demanding and deliberate mental activities, System1 operates quickly, automatically, without time consuming, and intuitively with little or no efforts. Although heuristic approaches that we adopt when we have no time to deliberate are based on System1, and are very simple and intuitive, such approaches constantly suffer from cognitive biases. In this study, using about 190 crucial accident analyses, it was explored how cognitive biases are include as a major causes of crucial accidents. It has been clarified that optimistic bias and loss aversion are more frequently observed in the range of this study. In conclusion, we are susceptible to cognitive biases, and never behave rationally. Due to such property (irrationality), we repeatedly commit similar error as we see in the statistical analysis of 190 cases of crucial accidents. This means that how we actually behave (irrationality) is more important than how we should behave (rationality)