SW
STANDINGWAVES
HUMAN FACTORS
Neuroscience research on decision-making is pretty conclusive: we are bad at it. Creativity and ingenuity? We humans are good at this. Patterns? We’re exceptional at recognizing these. Implementing rules? Check. Assembling vague cues and assessing relative options (i.e. deci- sion-making)? Not so good. Funny that whitewater paddling should be a decision-making game. Whitewater decisions are highly complex, whether formally scout- ing or boogie boating and making calls on the fly. Paddling decisions are about predicting dynamism—how moving water, stationary hazards and a paddler’s ability will interact. As we become better paddlers we not only increase our skill but also improve our ability to predict. This decision-making capacity is really what sets the expert apart from the novice. What’s more, this is a highly trainable skill and one that improves in proportion to experience level. Realistically, this is the focus of any instructional program once the basic mechanics of the sport are taken care of. But it’s not that easy of course. There is one major random vari- able and confounding factor: the decision maker.
Human Factors is the name of a field of study that tries to understand how trained and capable people fail to make reliable decisions. Airline
32 RAPID SPRING 2013
EGO IS THE WILD CARD WHEN IT COMES TO GOOD DECISION-MAKING
pilots, military units and surgical teams have all come under study, as have professional sports teams and backcountry skiers. It turns out to be pretty simple: peer pressure and ego get in the way when we likely already know better. These human factors become subjective hazards in complex environments, as it turns out, and follow predictable patterns regardless of workplace or activity. Luckily we are good at recognizing patterns. The acronym FACETS is used in industrial safety training to draw at-
tention to the human factors that typically compromise decision-making and creates a simple rule-based checklist that works for our brains. It looks at subjective elements beyond the hazards of the rapid, for ex- ample, and warns that they may cloud our decision-making. Taken to the whitewater environment, FACETS looks like this:
F » FAMILIARITY: The rapids and hazards on our home rivers become dulled with familiarity. This does not lessen their potential for harm. How often do locals scout the big rapid on their after-work run? It takes just one log to totally change a rapid.
A » ACCEPTANCE FROM PEERS: This is the peer pressure category. We do things to fit in, potentially getting us in over our heads. Peer pres- sure is a potent force, subtly (or blatantly) encouraging paddlers to run a
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