The Impact of Styles of Thinking and Cognitive Bias on How People Assess Risk and Make Real-World Decisions in Oil and Gas Operations

Abstract

paper is written from a psychological perspective, though it tries to illustrate the argument with examples relevant to oil and gas operations. While there have been previous attempts to apply this area of knowledge to the analysis of real-world incidents (see, for example, Thorogood et al. 2014; Crichton and Thorogood 2015) and to develop operational interventions (McLeod and Beckett 2012), such attempts have been limited to date, and have lacked the necessary research evidence. There is a compelling need to understand better how these psychological processes actually influence realworld operations, and to develop practical approaches to mitigating the associated risks.