Operationalization of Learned Carelessness

Abstract

The theory of learned carelessness offers an explanation why humans take unnecessary risks by omitting safety precautions against better judgment, but empirical research on learned carelessness is scarce. To test the theory 16 commercial aircraft pilots inspected flight plans on a multi-function display and the occurrence of flight plan errors was manipulated. Pilots rated effort of check performance, risk resulting from check omission and we measured the rate of falsely accepted erroneous flight plans. Participants who repeatedly encountered erroneous flight plans detected more errors during the test phase than participants who previously received only error-free flight plans (p < .01). The results provide evidence that subjective risk resulting from check omission affected the development of learned carelessness (p = .053), while effort of check performance displayed no effect (p = .80) due to invariance in ratings.