Individuals create and prevent industrial crises. As a result, understanding their behavior is essential to anticipating, managing and avoiding such crises. Four approaches are described here for incorporating research regarding indi vidual behavior into industrial design, one of which is elaborated in some de tail. That approach involves exploring the design implications of stylized facts extracted from the study of individuals. These "facts" include the tendency for people to be overconfident in the extent of their own knowledge (which has implications for the trustworthiness of risk analyses), the tendency to exagger ate in hindsight what could have been anticipated in foresight (which has im plications for accident investigation), and the vagaries of laypeople's risk per ceptions (which has implications for communication in both routine and emergency situations). The risks of using — and of ignoring - this research are also discussed.
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