The influence of confirmation bias on the decision making of emergency services pilots : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Aviation at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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Date
2022
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Massey University
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Abstract
Pilots of emergency services aircraft face complex, challenging, and life and death situations on a regular basis as part of their roles. The purpose of this research was to investigate how confirmation bias may influence pilots to make potentially unsafe decisions. Confirmation bias has previously been found to adversely affect decision quality in several areas of aviation. 101 emergency services pilots participated in this research by using an online tool which presented them with three scenarios representative of the types of situations they encounter in their line of work. After each of the scenarios, participants were asked four questions: their willingness to fly the specific scenario, whether a confirmatory factor influenced their decision, and how confident they were in their previous two answers. The findings suggested high levels of confirmation bias across all participants. Whilst the criticality of the scenario presented did not provide a statistically significant difference in the level of confirmation bias of participants, the total number of missions participants decided to fly, and their total emergency services flight hours, did. The findings overall suggest that confirmation bias may adversely affect emergency services pilots’ decision-making, leading them to decide to fly based on an unrealistically positive appraisal of information relevant to making a decision. The findings were broadly consistent with prior research on confirmation bias and aviation decision making and appeared to provide a framework for understanding a number of previous fatal accidents of emergency services aircraft. The main limitation was use of hypothetical scenarios, rather than real life ones, due to ethical and practical implications of conducting this research on real-life missions.