If you have read any of my posts about safety management and what a safety management system should look like, you know I am all about “walking the talk” and how this simple failure of the senior leadership team is the most effective manner of destroying TRUST and CREDIBILITY within the safety movement. Workers, especially the safety professionals on the front line of developing, implementing, measuring, and managing the SMS, hear one message but “see something very different” in reality.
This conflict is best understood by looking at the “Stroop Effect”, named after J. Ridley Stroop, and involves naming the color of words printed in a different color. Now the study was in NO way tied to safety, but there is a strong connection; as the study is widely used to indicate the mental process of attentional fatigue and/or the decreased ability to inhibit ongoing competing conflicts often associated with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).
When the meaning of a word and its color are congruent, such as the word “BLUE” written in blue color, it is easy to recognize the actual color of the word.
But when the meaning of the word is incongruent with the color, such as “BLUE” written in red color, it creates a conflict between the color and the word’s meaning. In order to name the color correctly, the two processes compete for the final decision-making process.
