In many hazardous industries such as oil and gas, nuclear, and transport, safety risks are overseen by regulatory agencies.
These government or independent bodies are responsible for setting and enforcing legal standards to keep safety risks within an acceptable level. Safety regulators actively monitor how industries operate, assess compliance, investigate incidents and ensure that appropriate corrective actions are taken when necessary.
When we think of such regulatory work in safety critical industries, we often imagine checklists, procedures, and technical knowledge. Yet, beneath regulatory decisions lies something distinctly psychological. Empirical evidence demonstrates that human cognition shapes how decisions and judgements are formed.
Our recent project set out to explore how those involved in safety regulation decision-making, such as inspectors and policy staff, can manage the psychological ‘blind spots’ that might influence their decisions.
Why psychology matters in safety regulation
Psychological science has long shown that decision-making is shaped by internal factors such as our memories, expectations, beliefs, and the mental shortcuts we unconsciously rely on.
As Professor Sharon Clarke explains: “While we often think of regulation as a technical or procedural task, human psychology plays a central role in the way decisions are actually made on the ground.”
One powerful example is regulatory capture. This occurs when inspectors unintentionally become too aligned with the organisations they oversee, often after long-term interaction. While inspectors are trained to recognise risks like regulatory capture, ‘blind spots’ in cognitive processes can give rise to biases and heuristics, such as ‘confirmation bias’ where decision-makers overemphasise confirmatory evidence, and underweight disconfirmatory evidence.
Our research team saw an opportunity to provide evidence-based strategies for avoiding cognitive biases under real-world pressure.
Strategies to strengthen decision-making
Drawing from the research literature, we identified three broad categories of strategies to counteract decision-making ‘blind spots’:
Information Strategies: These strategies push inspectors to interrogate the evidence more deeply and explore alternative interpretations. They include considering multiple possible outcomes, switching perspective or asking decision-makers to explicitly justify their reasoning. The goal is to improve information-processing mechanisms to avoid basing decisions too heavily on assumptions.
Awareness Strategies: Awareness strategies are about understanding one’s own cognitive processes. Regulatory decision-makers are encouraged to monitor their own beliefs, assumptions, and emotional reactions during an inspection. Self-reflection helps surface hidden biases before they influence decisions. The aim is to develop the habit of checking in with oneself, especially when under pressure.
Social Strategies: No inspector works entirely alone, and social context can be an important opportunity to counteract biases. Social strategies aim to create a culture where challenge is welcomed rather than avoided. This includes assigning “devil’s-advocate” roles, formalising dissent or holding “second-chance” meetings that allow teams to revisit earlier judgments. These structures promote psychological safety which is essential for open, honest evaluation.
Testing the strategies in real-world training
To explore how these strategies work in practice, we designed a training programme for 170 inspectors from three UK safety and environmental regulators - the Office for Nuclear Regulation, the Environment Agency, and the Office of Rail and Road. The training intervention included an experimental group and an active control group. The experimental group participated in training on the three blind spot management strategies: information, awareness and social strategies. Using scenario-based learning and case studies, participants practiced identifying and managing cognitive blind spots. The control group received a different kind of training related to qualitative research methods.
Regulatory staff were highly engaged with the training material and connected this with challenges in their day-to-day work. Follow-up focus groups showed that many participants valued the opportunity to step away from the pace of their work and reflect on their thinking and assumptions shaping their judgement. Yet, the project also highlighted that changing ingrained cognitive habits takes time and might require more than a one-off training session.
Looking forward
The project gives regulators a stronger evidence base for inspector development and bridges scientific insight and practical decision-making. We are now continuing to work with regulators to explore how these strategies can be embedded into everyday practice to ensure ongoing opportunities to strengthen regulatory decision-making.
The project is driven by the vision of the Thomas Ashton Institute for Risk and Regulatory Research to provide organisations with the knowledge needed to build safer workplaces and environments.
Watch a video about the project below:
Find out more about the Thomas Ashton Institute and this project >>
