Learning from a Brush with Danger: Evidence that Pilot Learning from Dangerous Incidents is Enabled by Counterfactual Thinking and Hindered by Organizational Accountability

We investigate learning from experience and how it is hindered by threatening accountability. We hypothesize that aviation pilots learn from a “close call” when they respond with self-focused upward counterfactual comparisons - thoughts about how the danger could have been reduced had they acted differently. However, we argue that these self-critical thoughts are less likely among pilots accountable for their performance to organizational supervisors. Converging support for the hypothesized pattern - that accountability dampens learning from experience through its suppression of self-focused upward counterfactual thoughts - was obtained in experiments with novice pilots on flight simulators and in an analysis of a NASA database of pilot reports about actual dangerous incidents