In brief, mistakes can be explained as something we think or do which does not correspond to facts or standard norms; they can be divided into small, “shit happens-mistakes”, such as stepping into the shower with your socks on, vital, such as marrying the wrong person, or fatal, which can have deadly outcomes such as plane crashes due to mistakes made in the cockpit.
“Because we talk so much, slips of the tongue are probably the most frequent type of mistake. These can lead to major consequences, but often there are none whatsoever”, says Cathrine Felix.
Admitting a mistake is no simple matter. This is why rationalisation is a common way of dealing with it. Leon Festinger describes it as “cognitive dissonance”, i.e. trying to get the world to correspond to what we are feeling, or what we have done. One example is the sect that believed that the world was going to end on 21 December 1954. When the doomsday prophecy did not come to pass, the sect leader had a vision that the world had survived despite everything, thanks to the strength of the sect members’ faith.
“In order to avoid rattling our self-image, we change the story and find an explanation for why it wasn’t really a mistake, in other words we don’t apologise at all”, says Cathrine Felix.
Sidney Dekker, former professor of system safety at LU, thinks that what we call human error doesn’t really exist. When accidents or errors happen, we always try to find a scapegoat. But, according to him, that person’s mistake is merely a symptom of deeper, underlying structural faults.
“A fairness aspect comes into play here too. Blame should be placed on the right party. People shouldn’t lose their jobs when a grave error in administering medication could be attributable to there being two apparently identical containers next to each other, albeit with different contents, and the nurse happened to pick the wrong one. But of course, the mistake can be attributable to the individual, if the nurse came to work under the influence of alcohol, for example”, says Cathrine Felix.
“Making many mistakes can also be seen as necessary to achieving success. You get impressed by how many things do end up going right anyway”, concludes Cathrine Felix.
By Gisela Lindberg – published on 14 February 2019 |
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