Those who subscribe to the school of thought known as behavioral safety agree that the key to making individuals safe is helping them develop and exercise safe habits at home and on the job. But many disagree about how to accomplish that goal. There are two competing approaches. The "cognitivists" say change people's attitudes, beliefs and values and they will change their behavior. The "behavioralists" say begin by changing people's safety-related behaviors and once the behaviors become habitual their attitudes and values may also change.

What we have here, then, is the classic "chicken or the egg" dilemma. Which comes first, the behavior or the attitude?

In the coming weeks, I will analyze this debate and present what I see as the resolution. I will argue that like the old nature vs. nurture controversy about the relative importance of heredity and experience, the answer to attitude vs. behavior is a bit of both. Finally, I will outline a holistic approach that incorporates aspects of both theories and suggest ways to apply the approach to your own organization.

The Cognitive View

Let me start out by explaining the competing views and the differences between them. This will be a fairly simple and straightforward analysis. For a more thorough and detailed discussion, see an article I wrote on this subject for Occupational Health & Safety Magazine in 1999 (Topf, "Chicken/Egg/Chegg! The merits of a holistic, integrated approach vs. a behavior-based approach, to create lasting change in unsafe attitudes and behaviors," OHS Magazine, July 1999).

The cognitive approach to safety stresses strategies for thinking, problem solving and the way individuals learn. Training is designed to influence perception and our ability to pay attention. In simple terms, cognitivists believe people can learn to "think safely." They also believe that to stay safe, people need skills to help them pay attention to a task and the dangers associated with it, and that people can be taught to develop these skills.

An Assessment

I am not trying to say that the cognitive approach is a simple panacea that will immediately change every person's unsafe attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to safe ones for ever. But, when coupled with a number of other methodologies, the cognitive approach provides the foundation for the most effective behavioral change intervention that allows for individuals to take responsibility for their own behavior and the behavior of others on a short- and long-term basis. We will explore how these behaviors weave together later in this series.

MEMBER REPLY
Young Worker Orientation - 10 Ways to Blow It

I'm assuming that your article on "Young Worker Orientation - 10 Ways to Blow It" is a tongue-in-cheek presentation. All these issues apply to any case where an individual is starting a new job, including me as a "Baby Boomer" when I first got out of school all the way back in 1969. Each one of the 10 scenarios you present is the antithesis of what a supervisor or manager should do regardless of the generation of the worker involved.

Gary C. Wolf
Principal Consultant
Wolf Safety Group, LLC

Editor's Note: You're right on both counts, Gary. It was a tongue-in-cheek article and it's applicable to all employees, not just Gen Y. It was just titled that because it was a sidebar to the article series. CJ.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Chain-Reaction Explosion Kills 1,100

August 7, 1956

It resembled a well-planned terrorist attack, wiping out several city blocks and killing at least 1,100 residents of Cali, Colombia. But the chain-reaction explosion of seven ammunition trucks on Aug. 7, 1956 was never proven to be anything but an unforeseen disaster.

The National Army trucks, loaded with 42 tons of dynamite and gasoline, exploded just after midnight, leveling an estimated 2,000 buildings in downtown Cali. Four thousand people were injured.

One theory floated after the Cali disaster was that one or more of the parked trucks had overheated, causing the dynamite to explode.

A blast survivor commented that, "It was as if the cemetery had jumped into the air."

It's unthinkable that any vehicle loaded with explosives would be left parked in the downtown area of any major city today for any innocent purpose. And any other motivation for doing so is enough to send a shiver down anyone's spine.

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