Enjoying my summer leave sitting on the patio of my apartment on the Greek island of Crete, sipping on a good cup of strong Colombian coffee, I opened my laptop to check if there was anything urgent that needed my attention at work. This is when I noticed an email reminding me of the deadline for my next Embodied Safety column.

Gathering my thoughts and wondering what to write about, I watched holidaymakers and island locals going about their daily lives. Many were enjoying the summer holidays with their loved ones. This is when the penny dropped and I got the idea to write about how we think and act as human beings.

Watching people it became evident that many of their actions were probably not of a conscious nature, but rather instinctive, automatic, and unconscious. There were two people playing tennis on a court at the hotel in front of me, for example. One evidently knew what they were doing, while the other was clearly a beginner. The experienced player was playing without much effort and I guess not even thinking about many of her moves. In contrast, the young girl she was playing against was stressed and probably thinking about each move and action, whilst trying to follow instructions from the more experienced player.

I made myself a second cup of coffee and continued to just observe others on the tennis court, in the swimming pool, and driving or walking past my patio. I noticed many examples of conscious and unconscious behaviours, giving me much food for thought.

At one stage I noticed a young boy, probably around six years of age, exiting a small shop located next to our apartment. His mother had bought him a blow-up tube to use either in the pool or in the sea. As he exited the shop, the wind caught the tube, ripping it out of his little hands and blowing it into the street.

I felt a shiver run down my spine as immediately the young boy ran after the tube to catch it, not noticing an approaching car. The driver was forced to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting him. The boy’s mother noticed her son running into the road, screamed out his name, and leapt into the road to save him. At that instant, she did not look left or right; her instinct as a mother was to protect her son. A delivery vehicle approaching from the left had to slow down and the driver shouted some obscenity at the mother as he passed.

After pulling the boy to safety by yanking on his arm, the mother started shouting at her son, bringing him to tears. I believe she was speaking Swedish; though I couldn’t understand, it was very clear from the tone of her voice and her hand gestures that she was not happy with him for running into the road.

For me, the common issue about what had just happened was that both the young boy and his mother reacted without thinking about their actions. Both mother and son acted in an unconscious state of mind, which is normal and completely in line with how we often act as human beings.

Many people talk about us having “one brain and two minds”, the slow and the fast, or the conscious and the unconscious. Actually, if you think about it (excuse the pun), we have “one brain and three minds”. I will use the example of driving to explain this concept, from learning to do so through to becoming a competent and then experienced driver.

Mind one – the conscious mind

The conscious mind is one’s objective or thinking mind, which involves all of the things that a person is aware of and thinking about at a given time. Known as the slow mind, it is only capable of taking in a limited amount of information at a time. The conscious mind, which is limited to one thought at a time, is related to the conscious awareness of what is happening around oneself.

For example, when learning to drive a car, most of a person’s actions are in the conscious mind. The learner driver consciously thinks about what they are doing. This includes adjusting the mirrors and the seat before starting the car, focusing on accelerating, engaging and disengaging the clutch and gears, looking over the shoulder prior to turning, and holding the steering wheel in the correct position. All of this is done whilst listening to the driving instructor, as well as observing and even analysing the actions of other road users, as well as pedestrians.

The social impact of what is happening plays a key role in one’s actions and communicates with the unconscious; however, I will not go into more detail about that at this stage.

Mind two – the intermediate mind

The intermediate mind, also known as the accelerating mind, takes over when we start moving from the conscious mind towards the unconscious mind in what we do and how we act. This occurs when we do certain tasks – even if they are new – with less conscious thought, using a more automatic type of behaviour.

In the intermediate mind, regarding driving, the driver no longer focuses on everything that they are doing, but only on certain selected issues. For example, as the driver becomes more confident, they will at some stage automatically perform some actions, like looking over their shoulder before turning, fitting the seatbelt, and applying the handbrake. These actions are now mostly conducted in the unconscious mind (mind three).

However, the person still consciously thinks about engaging the clutch when changing gears, getting nervous when reversing, or looking left and right at an intersection. These actions are being performed in “mind two”, the intermediate mind. At some stage, as the driver becomes more confident, these too will mostly move into the unconscious mind.

Mind three – the unconscious mind

The unconscious mind, also referred to as the fast mind, never switches off. It can deal with many issues at any given time and is responsible for most of our actions, thoughts, and behaviours.

So, returning to the example of learning to drive a car, after a learner driver has passed their examination, their confidence in driving keeps growing the more they drive. Driving predominantly moves from the intermediate mind to the unconscious mind.

Drivers do, however, switch between minds one, two, and three at times, as they experience different conditions and environments. For example, upon seeing a traffic policeman ahead, the unconscious mind results in the driver applying brakes, without even thinking about it. There’s then a shift to the conscious mind before the driver looks at the speedometer to check their speed.

From my own experience, I know that when driving we can at times become caught up in our own thoughts or preoccupied with other distractions, like talking to someone on the mobile (hopefully hands-free) or having a conversation with passengers. Without a doubt, this is true for all drivers. These distractions remove our conscious-based focus on the road and how we operate the car. Then, when arriving at the destination, we hardly remember the journey just travelled.

Many road accidents probably occur because a driver was being distracted or had been driving in the unconscious mind and was too slow to react to an emergency situation.

Acknowledging that “one brain – three minds” is key to risk and safety

Let us now take the example of a new production line being commissioned in a factory. Whilst the operators are being trained to operate the new line, most of their thoughts are in the conscious state of mind (mind one), trying to understand and remember how to operate the machine safely and efficiently, thereby learning systematically and definitively through trial and error. During this stage, the operators would be reading the handbooks and manuals to understand the correct work procedures and machine setup.

Some weeks later, they become familiar with some of the controls and procedures. At this stage, they stop referring to some elements of the handbook and procedures, concentrating instead on certain new elements or on polishing their skills in others. They are now operating in the intermediate mind (mind two) in some of their activities.

After some months, the operators become competent and confident in running the production line without having to refer to the manuals or written procedures at all. They now start operating in both the conscious and unconscious minds. In many aspects, their behaviour becomes automatic and therefore in the unconscious state of mind (mind three). Similar to the driver example, the operators will now also continuously move between all three minds.

It is, therefore, important for persons employed in the risk and safety profession to understand that procedures, risk assessments, and manuals are mostly referred to during the learning stages. This lessens as the employees become confident in what they are doing. Therefore, believing that piles of complicated documents filled with lots of information will be continuously referenced is misguided. These documents are actually often placed on a shelf and referred to only when a certification audit is conducted.

When investigating incidents, risk and safety tend to focus the attention on the conscious thoughts of people, trying to understand how a person’s thoughts resulted in them deciding to work unsafely. The belief that the person involved took the decision to work unsafely means that little (if any) consideration is given to their unconscious actions. If the focus of an incident investigation was instead placed on these elements, the outcome would be rather different and more value adding.

Similarly, the mother who shouted at her son for running into the road could have rather used the incident as a learning experience to highlight the importance of looking both ways before crossing (or entering) the road.

About The Author

Brian Darlington is the group head of safety and health for the Mondi Group, based in Vienna, Austria. He has filled the role since 2012 and is responsible for safety and health in more than 30 countries. Darlington started working at Iscor before joining Mondi in 1987, working in Gauteng. In 2000 he transferred to the Kraft Division in Richards Bay. During 2005, he transferred to Europe, taking up the position of business unit SHE manager, responsible for SHE in paper mills in Austria, Hungary, Israel, Slovakia, Poland, South Africa and Russia, as well as forests operations in South Africa and Russia.

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