Can Hypnosis Improve Safety Investigations?
Many incidents occur when workers momentarily forget to follow a well-established procedure or special precaution, but when interviewed can’t remember the training.
When accident investigations are conducted, we in OHS tend to give undue weight to eyewitness statements, even though studies show many are inaccurate. Doubt this? Then take your friend’s watch and ask them to provide you with 12 unique features to positively identify it. Most people will not remember 8 features, let alone 12.
Crime & Mystery Fiction
It has been suggested, by some in the psychology arena, that hypnosis could help maintain or restore memory of previous events eg training for critical tasks. This notion has been popularised by many mystery movies and the proliferation of television crime programs.
The problem with popularising use of techniques like hypnosis in mystery fiction programs is that over time many people start to believe they are true events, because they have seen it represented many times in a variety of circumstances.
They forget the programs were created for entertainment, and are not documentaries. This can even permeate into legal circles, as exampled below.
I recently came across an article* on research into remembrance of past events, which also addressed some popular myths about memory.
* Hypnosis and Retrieving Memories, p69-73, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology, Lilienfeld et al, Wiley - Blackwell, 2010
A couple of famous myths about human memory include:
“Human memory is like a tape recorder or video camera, and accurately records the events we’ve experienced”, and “When someone has a memory of a trauma while under hypnosis, it objectively must actually have occurred.”
Scientific Research on Hypnosis
In short, numerous scientific studies have shown people’s recall of past events while under hypnosis is not more accurate than normal recall.
In fact, hypnosis in some circumstances can create more recall errors or false memories, and even worse can create virtually unshakeable conviction that false memories are true.
Interestingly, one of the criminal cases (against a US Cardinal), which unravelled after it was found a witness’s false memories only emerged after hypnosis with an un-qualified therapist. Thirty years later we had the Cardinal Pell case in Australia.
Conclusions
Hypnosis has been shown to positively help treat pain, some medical conditions, and habit disorders such as smoking, but it is indisputable that it can foster false memories in some people.
I think the lesson for us in workplace safety is to stick to scientifically proven techniques and be wary of popular new things which promise unrealistic improvements.
Our Safety Leadership courses and workshops are based on well-proven processes and techniques. For more information on this subject call us on 8544 4300 or email Gary Rowe.
