Individual Differences in Accident Liability: A Review and

Integrative Approach

Rebecca Lawton and Dianne Parker, University of Manchester, Manchester, England

This paper reviews research since 1970 on the relationship between accident lia-
bility and individual differences, focusing specifically on accidents at work. The
history of research into accident liability and the methodological problems asso-
ciated with the research are considered. The review goes on to examine work on
the impact of personality factors, cognitive factors, and social factors on the like-
lihood of accident involvement at work. We suggest that research into individual
differences in accident liability should consider two possible routes to accident
involvement via errors and/or violations. Although errors are predominantly
associated with cognitive factors, violations have their origins in social psycho-
logical factors. We also consider the role of stress in mediating the personality-
accident association. It is contended that individuals differ in their reactions to
stress, so that although some respond by an increase in risk-taking behavior, the
effect on others is to increase the likelihood of suboptimal performance in terms
of information processing. Actual or potential applications of this research
include the development of a more sophisticated model of individual differences
in accident liability, which should be useful to organizations attempting to pro-
mote safety.

INTRODUCTION that the explanation of this susceptibility is to

Historical Background to Accident
Liability
Two important changes in British industrial
practices were held responsible for the dra-
matic increase in accidents in the early part of
this century. The first was the increased pres-
sure of work and the speeding up of machines,
and the second was the drafting of younger
and older men as well as women into the
workplace, while “able-bodied men” joined
the armed services. The pioneering statistical
work of Greenwood and Woods (1919) was
carried out within this context. Their report to
the Industrial Fatigue Research Board stated
that the results “afford strong grounds for
thinking that the bulk of the accidents occur
to a limited number of individuals who have a
special susceptibility to accidents and suggest
be found in the personality of the individuals”
(preface).
Newbold (1927) and Farmer and Chambers
(1926) continued the work of Greenwood and
Woods, broadening the concept of unequal lia-
bility for accidents. Newbold showed that
there was consistency in the individual’s ten-
dency to have an accident in various circum-
stances (e.g., accidents at work and home),
based on statistical evidence. In 1926, Farmer
and Chambers took a further step, separating
accident proneness as a special factor within
accident liability. However, the statistical meth-
ods used were not sophisticated, and there was
no means to separate a tendency to report acci-
dents from a tendency to have accidents.
Moreover, as Adelstein (1952) emphasized,
many of the early studies (Dunbar, 1943; Till-
man & Hobbs, 1949; Wong & Hobbs, 1949) had

Requests for reprints should be sent to Rebecca Lawton, Department of Psychology, University of Manchester,
Manchester, M13 9PL, England. HUMAN FACTORS, Vol. 40, No. 4, December 1998, pp. 655–671. Copyright © 1998,
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.
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656
serious methodological flaws. There were two
main problems: First, differences in the level
of exposure to risk of the so-called accident-
prone group were not considered. Second,
most of the studies were retrospective, and
the researchers had previous knowledge about
which of their participants were accident
prone. In spite of these flaws, the findings
could not be dismissed outright because they
were supported by a more rigorous prospec-
tive study of pupil pilots (Biesheuvel & White,
1949) that showed differences in intelligence,
skill, and personality between an accident
group of 200 pilots and a nonaccident group
of 400 pilots.
Following this early research, the incorrect
assumption was made that if chance factors
alone were acting, all persons in the population
would have the same number of accidents. As
a relatively small proportion of individuals
appeared to be responsible for a relatively large
proportion of accidents, the notion of accident
proneness gained a life of its own, particularly
as it appeared to excuse factory managers from
the responsibility for removing or controlling
hazards in the workplace. In theory, the “solu-
tion” to the problem was to remove those peo-
ple who, because of some “flaw” in their
personality, were unable to cope with these
hazards.
Consequently, the focus of research was to
isolate those factors that make an individual
accident prone. In fact, it proved impossible to
produce an overall stable profile of the accident-
prone individual or to determine whether
someone had an accident-prone personality.
Moreover, people seemed to become accident
prone for limited periods, rather than continu-
ally throughout their lives. Of accident
repeaters, Reason (1974) stated that “exami-
nation of accident repeaters over a lengthy
period indicates that they are members of a
club which is continuously changing its mem-
bership” (p. 187). In the same vein, Porter
(1988) suggested that accident proneness is
not an enduring trait that attaches itself to the
individual but, rather, is more likely to arise
from a combination of predispositions and cir-
cumstances (e.g., an anxious individual who is
overworked and is operating a new machine
for the first time).
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December 1998 – Human Factors
More recent studies have also failed to pro-
vide convincing evidence for the accident-
proneness concept. Mayer, Jones, and Laughery
(1987) examined the reports of more than
7000 accidents among oil industry workers.
Although they did find that within each of five
job categories there was unequal accident lia-
bility, the reliability of the finding is under-
mined by the fact that they failed to control
sufficiently for exposure or experience. More-
over, they conceded, “One cannot be content
to conclude that those workers who have expe-
rienced many accidents are accident prone…
attributing multiple accidents to accident
proneness is like saying that a sore throat is
due to chronic pharyngitis” (p. 198).
Methodological Problems with Accident
Liability Research
The majority of research published in the
area of accident liability is retrospective.
Significant differences between the accident-
free and accident-involved groups are taken to
provide evidence that the measured criterion
characteristic is causally linked to accidents,
which may not necessarily be the case. Studies
employing a prospective design are much
more informative in establishing causality.
However, the difficulty and expense of carry-
ing out longitudinal prospective studies means
that they are uncommon. Correlation coeffi-
cients above .4 are unusual in both retrospec-
tive and prospective studies, leading some to
argue that the whole correlational approach is
unhelpful. Others point out that effects sizes
of this magnitude are by no means unusual in
field studies and, given the large random com-
ponent and the unreliability of accident rates
over time, should not be dismissed. McBride,
Peck, and Coppin (1965, as cited in Shaw &
Sichel, 1971b) argued, based on the estimated
reliability ceiling (r = .29) for accidents over a
three-year period, that it is unreasonable to
expect that any predictive battery or model
will ever account for more than 9% (0.292) of
the variability in accidents over a similar period.
Therefore, if even a small effect can be repli-
cated, serious consideration should be given
to the findings. McKenna, Duncan, and
Brown (1986) also argued that many different
types of human failures can cause an accident,
ACCIDENT LIABILITY
making it unlikely that any one measure will
be able to predict very much of the variance
reliably. Considering the practical implications
of being able to predict some of the variability
in the rates of potentially fatal accidents, the
pursuit of causative factors appears worthwhile
(Rosenthal, 1990). Elander, West, and French
(1993) argued that the relatively small amount
of variance in traffic crash rates accounted for
by the predictor variables in most studies –
commonly less than 10% – implies that tran-
sient factors must play an important role in
accident causation, leading to an underes-
timation of the importance of stable character-
istics.
As Grayson and Maycock (1988) pointed
out, the combination of methodological prob-
lems and inconsistent findings outlined previ-
ously meant that “it was almost inevitable that
the study of individual differences should go
into a decline in the face of the emerging sys-
tems approach” (p. 235). More recently, how-
ever, the system redesign strategy has begun to
yield diminishing returns and, coupled with
progress in both cognitive psychology (e.g.,
the development of error taxonomies; Ras-
mussen, 1982; Reason, 1987) and social psy-
chology (e.g., improved behavioral modeling;
Ajzen, 1988; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), this
has led to renewed interest in the study of the
individual differences underlying accident lia-
bility. Statistical methods have also developed
which can cope with some of the problems
that arise when dealing with accident data.
Techniques for testing causal models, such as
path analysis and its extension, structural
equation modeling (see Hoyle, 1995), may,
through statistical control, allow researchers to
move toward proposing causal paths in acci-
dent causation.
The remainder of this review will consider
the range of human factors that have been
studied in relation to accident liability, under
three broad headings: personality characteris-
tics, cognitive factors, and attitudinal factors.
In addition, the possible role of stress in acci-
dent liability is introduced at appropriate
points throughout. The link will be made
between these factors and the immediate
behavioral precursors of accidents, errors, and
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657
violations. A mediating role for stress is pro-
posed. The review is not exhaustive but is a
brief summary of research carried out in an
occupational context and published since
1970. Those interested in more comprehensive
literature reviews are directed to Hansen (1988),
Porter (1988), Lester (1991), and Lawton and
Parker (1998). Finally, suggestions for future
research directions and recommendations for
organizational action will be made.
RESEARCH EVIDENCE
Personality-Based Predictors of Accident
Involvement
Over the years, research on accident prone-
ness has indicated a plethora of different
personality characteristics that appear to be
associated with accident repeaters. Glendon
and McKenna (1995) argued that the search is
almost certain to be fruitless as “being unable
to produce any overall stable profile of the
accident prone person, it is obviously not pos-
sible to use a reliable yardstick in establishing
whether someone has an accident prone per-
sonality.” Nevertheless, research in this area
continues to proliferate.
Personality is usually defined as those rela-
tively stable and enduring features that distin-
guish individuals from one another and which
form the basis for predicting people’s future
behavior (Pervin, 1993). Both personality
traits and personality types have been investi-
gated in relation to accident involvement. In
relation to traits, the results of studies using
Cattell’s 16PF (Cattell, 1965) have been in-
consistent. Whereas Quimby and Watts (1981)
found no significant relationship between road
traffic accident involvement and any of the 16PF
factors, in a study of pilots Lardent (1991)
showed that the crash involvement could be
significantly predicted by high scores on con-
scientiousness (beta = .50), trustfulness (beta =
.25), naïveté (beta = .27), self-sufficiency,
(beta = .19) and low tension (beta = .18). In
the discussion of these results, Lardent (1991)
referred to them as “unexpected and rather
unique” (p. 18) and suggested that fighter
pilots may constitute a special case. He also
suggested that the findings lend support to
658
those researchers who are cautious about a
“generalized, unitary model of accident prone-
ness” (p. 18). In a study of young male con-
scripts, using logistic regression, Hilakivi et al.
(1989) also found that accident involvement
could be predicted by relatively high levels of
naïveté and trustfulness. However, in a review
of the literature on personality characteristics
and accidents that involved a conceptual fac-
tor analysis, Booysen and Erasmus (1989)
proposed that the two factors most relevant to
accident involvement were recklessness and
anxiety-depression.
The relationship between Eysenck’s person-
ality types (Eysenck, 1947, 1970; Eysenck &
Eysenck, 1968) and road traffic accidents has
been reviewed by Lester (1991), who conclud-
ed that neither introversion-extroversion nor
neuroticism (which measures personality
along a stability-instability dimension) was sig-
nificantly predictive of accidents across the
group of nine studies considered. Several
other studies have suggested a link between
extroversion and accidents, though much of
this research concerns road traffic accidents
only (Fernandez, 1978; Mozdzierz, Macchi-
telli, Planek, & Lottmann, 1975; Schenk &
Rausche, 1979). To further confuse matters,
using a sample of Indian bus drivers, Pestonjee
and Singh (1980) found no-accident partici-
pants to be more extroverted than those who
had been involved in an accident. Moreover, a
recent study of offshore oil workers (Suther-
land & Cooper, 1991) found that although
there was no significant difference between
the two groups in terms of extroversion, with
respect to neuroticism, 37% of the high-N
scorers reported accidents, compared with
24% of the low-N scorers (χ2 = 3.69, p = .05).
Caution when interpreting the results of these
studies is also necessary, given the finding of
Powell, Hale, Martin, and Simon (1971) that
the association between extroversion and acci-
dents may be accounted for, at least in part, by
the greater inclination of extroverts to report
accidents.
Rotter’s (1966) concept of locus of control,
adapted by Jones (1984) to form the Safety
Locus of Control Scale, has been employed
several times as a possible indicator of acci-
dent involvement at work. Those with an
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December 1998 – Human Factors
internal locus of control (who feel in control
of the outcomes of their behavior with respect
to safety) have been shown to be less likely to
be accident involved than those, labeled exter-
nals, who feel that outcomes are beyond their
personal control (Jones & Wuebker, 1985;
Wuebker, Jones, & Dubois, 1985). Using a
general measure of locus of control, Clement
and Jonah (1984) showed a significant rela-
tionship between external locus of control and
number of accidents for men only (r = .17).
Mayer and Treat (1977) have shown that
externals are more accident involved than
internals. Thus, individuals who attribute out-
comes to factors beyond their personal control
were more likely to report being accident
involved. A study of chemical workers by
Denning (1983) using cluster analysis discov-
ered that one group of workers with high acci-
dent and injury rates was characterized by an
external locus of control. However, two crite-
rion group studies (Janzen, 1983; Sims,
Graves, & Simpson, 1984), which looked at
sawmill workers and mine workers, respec-
tively, failed to replicate this finding. The evi-
dence, again, is mixed. It must also be borne
in mind that it is plausible that having an acci-
dent has an effect on one’s perceptions of
locus of control, rather than the other way
round. Moreover, Foreman, Ellis, and Beavan
(1983) have shown that the difference be-
tween externals and internals held for partici-
pants whose self-reports of their accidents
implied that they were culpable but not for
those whose self-reports implied that they
were blameless. Two explanations are possi-
ble. It may be that internals are more likely
than externals to give accounts of accidents
that show themselves to be culpable, or it may
be that the experience of having an accident
for which one is culpable alters one’s percep-
tions of locus of control. Either explanation
undermines confidence in the results of stud-
ies linking locus of control with retrospective
reports of accidents.
The link between accident involvement and
the propensity to take risks has been investi-
gated in several settings. Beirness and Simpson
(1988), in a prospective study of personality
and accident involvement, used analysis of
variance to reveal a significant main effect for
ACCIDENT LIABILITY
accident involvement on two subscales of
Zuckerman’s (1979) Sensation-Seeking Scale.
The results indicated that those people in the
accident-involved group scored higher on the
subscales “thrill and adventure seeking” and
“experience seeking.” Meadows (1994) repli-
cated this finding, showing the same relation-
ship between scores on a scale of thrill seeking
and accident involvement over a three-year
period among 1500 drivers (r = .24).
Considered overall, the findings in this area
might indicate that personality is not systemat-
ically associated with accident likelihood, that
personality is not well measured, or even that
different personality factors are associated
with accidents in particular industries and
jobs. Furthermore, studies of personality and
accidents have tended to be retrospective,
based on self-reports of accidents, and many
have failed to control for factors such as expo-
sure to risk. These methodological flaws make
it difficult to rely on the findings.
The association between personality and
accidents is not straightforward, and the
research has produced a confusing array of
results. However, further analysis – particularly
of the more detailed studies in this area –
reveals a pattern that suggests that individuals
with characteristics toward the extreme ends
of two personality trait continuua have an ele-
vated risk of accident involvement. Shaw and
Sichel’s (1971a) data suggest that two person-
ality types are most likely to have road traffic
accidents: sociopathic extroverts (self-centered,
over confident, aggressive, irresponsible,
resentful, intolerant, impulsive, antisocial,
antagonistic to authority) and anxious-neurotics
(tension ridden, unduly sensitive to criticism,
indecisive, unable to concentrate, easily fatigued,
depressed, emotionally labile, easily intimidat-
ed, and with feelings of inadequacy).
Hansen (1989), in a study of 362 chemical
industry workers, demonstrated a link be-
tween both general social maladjustment (r =
.28) and distractibility (r = .31) and accidents.
By controlling for exposure to risk and consid-
ering a number of other variables, Hansen’s
study provided a powerful test of the relation-
ship between personality and accidents and, as
such, the findings are noteworthy. Similarly,
Chappelow (1989), in an investigation of air-
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659
crew error, distinguished between unstable
introverts and unstable extroverts. He report-
ed that during an emergency, the former suffer
over arousal, whereas the latter are character-
ized by deliberate risk taking and sensation
seeking. We would not want to argue that
there is an inevitable association between per-
sonality type and accident proneness, but it is
arguable that personality characteristics such
as sensation seeking or rigidity of thought can
have an impact on behavior that may make
accident involvement more likely. Beirness
(1993), in a review of the literature, conclud-
ed that although there is ample evidence that
personality factors can have an influence on
the manner in which people drive and the
incidence of accidents, the contribution of
personality factors to crash involvement is
likely to be indirect, mediated by other factors
and behaviors.
This idea is also supported by Farmer
(1984), who examined the relevance of per-
sonality differences to the flying task. He pro-
vided evidence that whereas extrovert pilots
are better able to cope with the demands of
difficult phases of the flight, introverts, who
exhibit superior performance on vigilance tasks,
may show superior monitoring of instruments
during undemanding phases. Farmer conclud-
ed that “it is probable that no unique accident
prone personality exists, and that progress will
be made only by attempting to relate personal
characteristics to specific types of human
error.” (p. 177).
It is widely accepted that 80% to 90% of
accidents are the result of human error (Hale
& Glendon, 1987; Heinrich, Petersen, & Roos,
1980). Recently it has been suggested (Parker,
Reason, Manstead, & Stradling, 1995; Reason,
Parker, & Free, 1994) that a useful distinction
can be made between errors and violations.
On the one hand, errors may be defined as
planned actions that fail to achieve the desired
goal. The actions can either be unintended
(slips and lapses) or intended (mistakes), but
in both cases the poor outcome is unintended.
Although slips and lapses are both failures in
execution, they differ with respect to observ-
ability. Slips, which are actions not as planned,
are potentially observable, whereas lapses,
which involve memory, are often apparent
660
only to the person who experiences them
(Reason, 1990).
Violations, on the other hand, are defined
as deliberate deviations from the recognized
safe method of working, which might be in
the form of rules, procedures, or group norms.
This distinction, which will be discussed in
detail later, informed a paper by Hofmann,
Jacobs, and Landy (1995) reviewing the liter-
ature pertaining to individual, micro-, and
macro-organizational influences on safety per-
formance in high-reliability process industries.
There, the authors emphasized that a mean-
ingful consideration of safety at the individual
level of analysis requires that one takes into
account both the cognitive factors implicated
by human errors and the attitudinal and moti-
vational factors that effect safe behavior.
In the following two sections we consider
these factors, reviewing the research evidence
from cognitive and social psychology. First, we
examine the studies linking cognitive perfor-
mance with accidents and posit errors as the
mediating factor. Second, we consider social
psychological studies associating attitudes and
accidents and suggest that the mediating fac-
tor here may be violations.
Cognitive Predictors of Accident
Involvement
Tests designed to measure cognitive pro-
cesses, including thinking, reasoning, and per-
ceiving, have been employed by accident
researchers to test the hypothesis that there is
a relationship between a particular cognitive
skill and accident likelihood. Early in the 20th
century, when psychology was dominated by
the behaviorist school of thinking, the focus of
research was stimulus and response and there
was much study of a range of low-level cogni-
tive skills (see Hale & Hale, 1972, for a re-
view). The few studies that have been carried
out in this area since the 1970s have, for the
most part, provided equivocal evidence on the
impact of such skills in accidents. For example,
whereas Kishore and Jha (1978) reported a
relationship between errors on a two-handed
coordination task and slower reaction times
and accidents among bus drivers but not in-
dustrial workers, Porter and Corlett (1989) re-
ported strong correlations (.38 to .65) between
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December 1998 – Human Factors
performance on a dual task and scores on an
accident-proneness questionnaire among a
small student sample. Lester (1991), reviewing
studies of individual differences in accident lia-
bility on the road, concluded that there was no
evidence of a significant relationship between
reaction time and accident rate.
Since the 1950s, a period during which the
ideas of cognitive psychology became domi-
nant, there has been more interest in the rela-
tionship between accidents and higher-order
cognitive abilities such as attention and percep-
tual style. The bulk of this work has involved
road traffic accidents, where it has been pro-
posed that attention and perception are of par-
ticular importance when traveling at speed.
Initial evidence of a relationship between field
dependence and accidents (Harano, 1970; Loo,
1978) did not find support in more statistically
sophisticated studies (Harano, Peck, &
McBride; 1975; McKenna et al., 1986). There
is some evidence from studies of attention-
switching ability (Gopher & Kahneman, 1971;
Kahneman, Ben-Ishai, & Lotan, 1973; Mihal &
Barrett, 1976) of a negative correlation be-
tween scores on a dichotic listening task and
accident rate. Indeed, in a meta-analytic study
of a range of predictors of driving accidents,
Arthur, Barrett, and Alexander (1991) found
auditory selective attention to be the most use-
ful predictor (mean r = .26). Others have
argued that the focus should be on visual,
rather than auditory, attention in relation to
driving, though Evans’s (1991) review of the
literature concluded that there is no evidence of
a systematic relationship between visual perfor-
mance and driving ability. Avolio, Kroeck, and
Panek (1985), using a sample of 72 drivers,
found differences between the nonaccident and
the accident group on a range of visual and
auditory attention tasks. Arthur, Strong, and
Williamson (1994) reported an overall correla-
tion of .31 between errors on visual attention
test scores and accidents. Porter’s (1988)
review concluded that poor visual attention and
the experience of recent major life events
appear to be the most consistent predictors of
accident liability. Broadbent, Broadbent, and
Jones (1986) provided evidence that attentional
facility is multifaceted, and it could be argued
that some of the studies mentioned earlier
ACCIDENT LIABILITY
suffer from a rather simplistic conceptualiza-
tion of attention.
A range of studies investigating the rela-
tionships between various cognitive abilities
and accident involvement (the majority of
which have considered only road traffic acci-
dents) have produced conflicting evidence.
Moreover, many of the published studies can
be criticized for lacking ecological validity.
McKenna and Crick (1991) attempted to
avoid this criticism by using a driving simula-
tor as a means of assessing hazard perception
and found that expert drivers showed better
hazard perception skills. However, there is no
direct evidence to suggest that the link be-
tween hazard perception and accident involve-
ment reflects cognitive ability (but see Quimby
& Watts, 1981). It could equally well be ar-
gued that some individuals are skilled as per-
ceivers but fail to interpret what they perceive
as hazardous.
In the safety literature it is now widely
accepted that human error contributes to
many industrial accidents (Reason, 1990;
Wagenaar, Hudson, & Reason, 1990). Con-
sideration of human error allows us to move
beyond the confines of cognitive performance
in general (i.e., what an individual is capable
of doing) to a consideration of the links
between various error types and accidents.
Although there do not appear to be any pros-
pective studies in the industrial context evalu-
ating the predictive power of tendency to slips
and lapses, in a retrospective study of 178
fatalities and 99 serious accidents in Finland
(Salminen & Tallberg, 1996), 84% to 94%
were attributable primarily to human error.
The majority of these were errors at the skill-
based level of processing – that is, errors of
execution. Slips and lapses (Norman, 1981;
Reason, 1990) occur most frequently when
the task requires little conscious effort and
can be said to occur automatically. Such errors
are thought to be the result of mistimed or
omitted attentional checks on the progress of an
action sequence. It is well established (Broad-
bent, Cooper, Fitzgerald, & Parkes, 1982) that
some people are indeed prone to absentminded
errors and are also likely to report relatively
high numbers of memory lapses and instances
of inattention.
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661
It has been suggested that one way in
which stress may be associated with accidents
is through an elevation in the rates of error.
However, Reason (1990) argued that stress
does not cause errors but, rather, that certain
cognitive styles result both in higher rates of
absentmindedness and in coping strategies
that are not appropriate for dealing with
stressful situations. Broadbent et al. (1986)
provided evidence suggesting that high levels
of self-reported cognitive failure may indicate
vulnerability to subsequent external stresses.
Trainee nurses with higher scores on the
Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) showed
more symptoms of stress than those with low
CFQ scores when working on stressful wards
but not when working on less-stressful wards.
Questionnaire studies of absentminded errors
do not consider directly the relationship
between cognitive failures and accidents, but
they do throw some light on the subject. Posit-
ing a mediating role for stress may help to
explain the inconsistent findings of the labora-
tory studies, many of which did not take stress
into account. Hockey, Clough, and Maule
(1996), discussing the effects of emotional
state on decision making and risk behavior,
suggested that stress may directly affect per-
formance by encouraging the use of shortcuts
in cognitive processing, thus reducing mental
effort. Shortcuts such as attentional narrow-
ing, reduced cognitive complexity in problem
solving, and a shift toward speed at the ex-
pense of accuracy may work by reducing the
demand on stretched information-processing
resources. It is not inconceivable that such
changes may lead to an increase in errors.
Clearly the effects of stress on cognitive per-
formance and error, and thus on the possibili-
ty of an accident, require further research. In
particular, it would be useful to clarify
whether it is subjective perceptions of stress
or reactions to the experience of stress that
affect errors and accidents.
Attitudinal and Motivational Predictors of
Accident Involvement
Recent years have seen a growing emphasis
within human factors research on studies that
go beyond human error in the form of slips
and lapses and that embrace social-psychological
662
issues such as safety attitudes, culture, and cli-
mate, all of which are related to the commis-
sion of violations at work. For example, a study
of three separate plants with high, medium,
and low accident records within a large indus-
trial facility (Olearnik & Canter, 1988) revealed
significant correlations between accident fig-
ures and questionnaire items reflecting a range
of safety-related attitudes. The attitudes mea-
sured included commitment to the safety of
coworkers, accident inquiries, rules about safe
working, recommended precautions, under-
standing safety, the job itself, and plant supervi-
sors. The attitudes of employees toward safety
were shown to be less positive in the high-
accident plant than the low-accident plant.
A number of studies have been carried out
by Donald and colleagues at the Safety Re-
search Unit at the University of Surrey, look-
ing at the association between attitude and
accident rates (e.g., Canter & Donald, 1990;
Donald & Young, 1996). Donald and Canter
(1994) described a measure of safety attitudes
that they showed to be positively and signifi-
cantly correlated with accident rates in the
chemical industry. Of the 10 subscales of the
Safety Attitude Scale, 9 correlated significant-
ly with self-reported accident figures (r = –.45
to –.83). Donald and Canter concluded that
“rather than dealing with unintended factors,
i.e. the slips and errors, what is necessary is to
create a climate where the dangerous actions
of which people are aware are not carried out”
(p. 207). Hurst, Young, Donald, Gibson, and
Muyselaar (1996) used the Safety Attitude
Scale together with a Process Safety Manage-
ment System audit tool, believing that these
two measures cover the two parts of safety
culture. Attitudes and beliefs were thought to
reflect the underlying components of safety
culture, whereas safety management systems
were thought to represent the tangible compo-
nents. Although Hurst et al. did not give the
values for correlations between safety attitudes
and accidents, they claimed that the correla-
tions between safety attitudes and accidents at
six major hazard sites in their study were
lower than those reported by Donald and
Canter (1994).
Lee, Macdonald, and Coote (1993) carried
out a large-scale survey assessing the risk per-
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December 1998 – Human Factors
ceptions and attitudes about safety of more
than 5000 employees at a nuclear reprocessing
plant, focusing on the relationship between
scores on three “risk factors” and individual
characteristics such as accident histories, age,
gender, job position, and type of job within
the organization. The most important finding
concerning accident liability was that a “posi-
tive” attitude toward risk was a significant
predictor of the likelihood of being involved in
accidents.
Two large-scale studies looking at the rela-
tionship between farm accidents and safety
attitudes have produced contradictory find-
ings. The first, a study of 493 Pennsylvanian
farmers (Murphy, 1981), found that partici-
pants indicated the same attitudes toward
farm safety concepts regardless of their acci-
dent involvement. The second study, involving
683 Canadian farmers (Harrell, 1995), used a
safety attitude questionnaire and found that
those with a high score on personal risk taking
and fatalism were more likely to have had an
accident than were low scorers. Furthermore,
safe farming practices, such as safe equipment
operation and the use of protective clothing,
also differentiated between those who were
more and those who were less likely to be
involved in an accident. Incompatible findings
such as these within similar populations are
perplexing to the safety practitioner. However,
such findings are not surprising, given the
unreliable nature of accidents.
Job satisfaction is another important aspect
of attitude to work which has been opera-
tionalized in safety research studies. Allodi
and Montgomery (1979) reported that although
job dissatisfaction was not predictive of acci-
dent liability, it was related to the probability
of excessive time off and of developing a neu-
rotic complication after an accident.
Job satisfaction is likely to be low when
employees experience unwanted levels of
stress in the workplace. The role of work stress,
subjective and/or objective, has been exam-
ined in some studies, the suggestion being that
stress may play a role both in the tendency to
report accidents and in the time lost as a
result of the accident. Hartley and El Hassani
(1994) examined the relationship between
stress and accidents in a sample of 335 truck
ACCIDENT LIABILITY
drivers and 420 car drivers. Based on the
assumption that drivers are aware of and can
report the behaviors, cognitions, and affect
associated with driving stress, a questionnaire
was employed to measure stress. Regression
analysis showed that age, gender, and stress
(both job related and general) accounted for a
total of 35% of the variance in accident or
violation reports. The significant factors were
“driving imperturbability,” “perceived stress-
fulness of driving,” “life stresses,” and “fre-
quency of driving.” These results must be
treated with caution, however, given that acci-
dents and convictions together form the
dependent variable and therefore it is not pos-
sible to distinguish accident-causing from
violation-causing factors. Moreover, the report-
ing of the regression analysis did not allow for
the relative impact of stress variables and
demographic/exposure variables.
Sherry (1991) proposed that workplace acci-
dents are caused by poor person-environment
fit, which gives rise to the experience of stress
and thus to an increased accident risk. In
addition to person-environment fit (linked
with accidents for the first time), Sherry mea-
sured employee attitudes toward the work
environment. Both supervisory and nonsuper-
visory staff in a large American rail transpor-
tation company took part in a survey. A new
instrument was developed for the purpose of
the study with 150 attitudinal items represent-
ing such areas as participation, credibility, peer
support, and safety. Person-environment (P-E)
fit was calculated as the difference between
the employee and his or her supervisor on
23 scales contained in the safety survey.
Significant differences were found between
the accident and nonaccident groups in terms
of P-E fit, such that nonaccident-involved
employees had better P-E fit. More detailed
analysis revealed that the differences were in
relation to supervisor support, credibility,
recognition, and peer safety practices. In a
second study, which used only responses
to the safety questionnaire, Sherry was able to
correctly classify 68.8% of the postcompletion
injury group and 95.5% of the precompletion
injury group.
That the accident and nonaccident groups
could be differentiated simply on the basis
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663
responses to a safety survey does not provide
strong evidence for the person-environment fit
theory. It does, however, point to the impor-
tance of attitudes toward work and suggests
particular areas worthy of investigation, such
as the importance of peer and team support
for safety practices. The measure of person-
environment fit in this study has not been vali-
dated elsewhere, and the study did not
actually include a measure of stress, a factor
that Sherry (1991) suggested is likely to medi-
ate the relation between P-E fit and accidents.
Future research in this area will need to clarify
what is being measured by P-E fit, as differ-
ences in attitudes between supervisors and
employees is a rather crude measure that may
simply reflect employee deviance. Finally, the
greater usefulness of the attitudinal question-
naire in predicting accidents in the precomple-
tion injury group suggests that having an
accident may have a strong influence on how
participants responded to the questionnaire
items.
Melamed, Luz, Najenson, Jucha, and Green
(1989) investigated the role of stress more
directly in terms of both accident occurrence
and sick leave in a study of 729 male workers
employed in five factories in Israel. They used
an objective measure of stress, the ergonomic
stress level (E-S-L), which includes ratings of
body motion and posture, physical effort,
active hazards, and environmental stressors.
Environmental annoyance was also measured
via self-reports so that the effect of individual
sensitivity to stressors could be taken into
account. Finally, stress reactions in the form of
work heart rate, job dissatisfaction, and somatic
complaints were examined. The study was ret-
rospective and used the organization’s acci-
dent statistics over a one-year period as the
dependent variable. The results showed a pos-
itive linear association between accident rate
and E-S-L. Those individuals who showed
greater sensitivity to environmental stressors
also had higher accident incidence, and this
effect increased with rising E-S-L.
Melamed et al. (1989) suggested that “pre-
occupation with disturbing job and work envi-
ronment characteristics . . . is an important
contributor to accident involvement. This pre-
of occupation may serve as a distracting factor
664
making the worker less attentive to danger
cues” (p. 1108). They went on to say that the
E-S-L is a reliable predictor of work accidents
and should be developed for systematic use in
industry. It could be argued, however, that the
E-S-L measure is confounded with exposure
to risk, given that one of the four components
of this aggregate measure is active hazards.
Indeed the results suggest that where exposure
to risk is high, those individuals who are more
sensitive to their environment are more likely
to have been involved in an accident.
SYNTHESIZING THE EVIDENCE
As described, the vast majority of studies
concerning individual differences in accident
liability have focused on one or more predic-
tor variables drawn from a fairly narrow per-
spective. However, some studies have attempted
a partial synthesis of the disparate literature
and have included a consideration of the role
of stress. For example, Steffy, Jones, Murphy,
and Kunz (1986) proposed a model of the
relationship between stress and accidents that
takes into account evidence from both cogni-
tive and social psychology. They suggested that
stressors, either work- or nonwork-related,
cause acute reactions, which can be psycho-
logical, physiological, and/or behavioral (e.g.,
anxiety, fatigue, and alcohol use, respectively).
These reactions to stressors have the effect
of decreasing intellectual and performance
capacities, such as reaction times and judg-
ment. Decreased capacities serve to increase
the probability of errors and can, as a result,
lead to accidents. The occurrence of the acci-
dent can function as a stressor that reactivates
the cycle. Steffy et al. used three case studies
in different industries to demonstrate that
stress assessment and intervention programs
can significantly reduce insurance-related losses.
Hansen (1989) also took a multiperspective
approach, developing and validating a rela-
tively sophisticated causal model of the acci-
dent process. The variables measured included
cognitive ability, general social maladjustment,
distractibility, involvement in counseling, job
experience, and age. The participants were
362 production and maintenance workers at a
large chemical processing company. The data
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December 1998 – Human Factors
were analyzed using structural equation mod-
eling, a technique rarely used in the field of
accident research. The model provided a good
fit to the data, with significant links between
accident consistency and scores on the general
social maladjustment scale and the dis-
tractibility scale. Hansen controlled for the
effects of exposure to accidents and of involve-
ment in counseling. Among more experienced
workers, risk exposure was shown to mediate
the effect of experience on accidents. Thus,
the experienced workers had more accidents,
but this was because they were exposed to
greater risk. Furthermore, one of the tests of
cognitive ability (Bennett; Aiken, 1979) corre-
lated with accident risk (.31) but not acci-
dents (.10), suggesting that employees may
have been chosen for risky jobs on the basis of
the types of mechanical reasoning skills mea-
sured by the Bennett test.
Sutherland and Cooper (1991), in their
study of offshore workers, concluded that cer-
tain personality characteristics/behavior pat-
terns seem to mediate the response to stress
and may be predictors of increased vulnerabil-
ity to accident involvement. They were cau-
tious about the findings, given that they were
based on self-report data, and suggested that
the relationship between these variables may
in fact be circular, not linear. In fact, Suther-
land (1993) reported that both operator and
contractor personnel who had been involved
in an accident perceived the environment to
be more stressful than did accident-free per-
sonnel, suggesting that the author regarded
the relationship between occupational stress
and accident involvement to be bidirectional.
Evidence was then provided to suggest that
personality style mediates the relationship
between stress and accidents, with Type A
personalities perceiving more stress and being
involved in a greater percentage of accidents
at work.
A program of research on driver behavior
at Manchester University in England has also
encompassed the approaches of cognitive and
social psychology. In several large-scale studies
a clear distinction has been established
between driving errors and driving violations,
the latter being at least partly intentional (e.g.,
Reason, Manstead, Stradling, Baxter, &
ACCIDENT LIABILITY
Campbell, 1990). Parker and colleagues have
also shown, both prospectively and retrospec-
tively, a positive relationship between road
traffic violations and accident involvement,
but they have shown no such relationship for
errors (Parker, Reason, et al., 1995; Parker,
West, Stradling, & Manstead, 1995). These
findings suggest a multifaceted approach to
accident prevention. Skills training may be
successful in reducing errors, but it will not
have a significant effect on the commission of
violations. The reduction of violations can be
tackled by persuading drivers not to drive in a
dangerous manner. In psychological terms this
means that safety research should move away
from an exclusive focus on cognitive psychology,
which emphasizes performance factors, and
should include the investigation of attitudinal
and motivational precursors of accidents,
which are the province of social psychology.
There is support for the importance of vio-
lations in an industrial context in Free’s (1994)
analysis of 21 British Rail accident reports.
Almost every one was found to involve an
error in conjunction with a violation, though
the two were not necessarily attributable to
the same individual. Violations appear to have
the effect of taking people into an area of
greater risk, thus making the situation less for-
giving of subsequent errors made by the viola-
tor or anyone else in the vicinity. Ranney
(1994) echoed this conjecture in a review of
models of driving behavior, suggesting that “if
drivers adopt inappropriate safety margins,
lapses of attention may leave insufficient room
for recovery. Identifying the situational deter-
minants of safety margins is also a potential
focus for roadway safety research” (p. 747).
Although the immediate cause of a particu-
lar accident may appear to be an error in the
form of a slip or a lapse, the necessary factor
in the accident sequence may be a violation of
a rule or a norm. Battman and Klumb (1993)
discussed the importance of rule violations for
organizational safety. They claim that viola-
tions in an industrial context arise from a con-
flict between organizational goals and
individual goals – for example, when work
pressures give rise to employees taking short-
cuts. Such actions may be disregarded by
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665
managers who, while acknowledging the
importance of safety, have production as their
primary objective.
A Multiperspective Approach to
Individual Differences in Accident Liability
Given the inherent unreliability of acci-
dents as a dependent measure, it may be more
profitable to focus on the psychological pre-
cursors of errors and violations, many of which
do not in fact lead to an accident. As Taylor
(1981) argued, taking accidents as the focus
of psychological investigation is probably not
the most useful approach, because no individ-
ual ever intends to have an accident. However,
if the precursors of errors and violations can
be identified, then it may be possible to design
interventions that reduce both their occur-
rence and the consequent elevated likelihood
of an accident.
A sophisticated explanation of the role of
human factors in accident causation demands
a multiperspective approach. On the basis of
the research evidence reviewed here, we
would suggest that there are two main routes
to accident causation. The first is the cognitive
route, which involves failures in information
processing or skill, resulting in errors. This is
the traditional realm of the psychologist in
safety research. The second, social-psychological,
route involves a consideration of attitudinal
and behavioral factors. These two routes to
accident involvement are by no means mutual-
ly exclusive. In fact, it seems that accidents
commonly involve errors and violations in
combination. We would also suggest that
stress has a critical role to play in relation to
both routes, linking personality factors with
accidents. Thus personality factors may pre-
dispose individuals to perceive and cope with
stressors in ways likely to lead to particular
types of unsafe acts. On the basis of the
research evidence reviewed here, a series of
tentative hypotheses may be formulated:
1. The occurrence of errors and violations, the
immediate precursors of accidents, increases
under stressful conditions.
2. Individuals at the extremes of the instability
scale, either extroverts or introverts, have high-
er rates of accident involvement than others,
666
particularly in response to stress. Unstable
extroverts may be more likely than normals to
respond to stress by showing risk-taking behav-
ior (i.e., committing violations), whereas unsta-
ble introverts exposed to stress may show a
tendency to make more errors. This is not to
suggest that unstable extroverts never suffer
from the performance decrements that give rise
to errors or that unstable introverts never have
the sorts of undesirable attitudes and motiva-
tions that promote the commission of viola-
tions.
3. Stress mediates the relationship between per-
sonality and accidents in two different ways.
First, a given situation may be differentially per-
ceived as stressful according to personality
type. Second, different personality types may
respond to experienced stress in different ways.
The suggestion that different personality
factors may be associated with different types
of accidents and that personality characteris-
tics are likely to be mediated in their effect by
performance and behavioral factors may serve
to account, at least in part, for the confusing
array of results in this area of research. In
fact, Sutherland and Cooper (1991) went so
far as to suggest that the jobs people seek out
may reflect their personality characteristics.
They found a relatively high proportion of
extroverts on drilling rigs, and Farmer (1984)
found that pilots were more than normally
aggressive and dominant. The risks associated
with particular jobs, and the safety character-
istics important for them, vary. In a setting
where vigilance is required, errors may consti-
tute the primary risk to system breakdown. In
another setting, where the system is well
defended against error, the primary risk may
come from people adopting unofficial work
practices in violation of safety procedures.
Directions for Future Research
A number of directions for future research,
concerning both areas of study and methods
of study, can be suggested:
1. The primary objective of future research in the
field of accident liability should be to overcome
the limitations of previous studies and to devel-
op a model of the accident causation process,
rather than to examine specific individual char-
acteristics in isolation. Models of the accident
causation process should also consider the role
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December 1998 – Human Factors
of stress as a mediating factor. The tentative
hypotheses outlined in the previous section
would provide a good starting point for such
research. In particular, the roles of subjective
and objective stress and their impact on rates of
errors and violations should be considered in
future research.
2. Studies should always control for exposure to
risk of accident. In the area of driving this
means asking respondents to record their aver-
age annual mileage and the types of roads on
which they drive most. For industrial research,
factors such as task requirements, risk assess-
ments, and hours worked should be taken into
account. Age and experience are also variables
likely to have an effect, direct or indirect, on
accident likelihood and therefore should be
considered.
3. A number of researchers have suggested a dis-
tinction between a temporary and a permanent
state of accident proneness (when considered as
a statistical fact). The use of longitudinal studies
that collect data over a number of years would
allow this distinction to be validated. In addition
it would be useful to investigate whether certain
factors such as stress or life events might predict
temporary states of increased accident liability
and whether other, more enduring characteris-
tics of the individual show an association with
the more permanent state.
4. Most studies of accident liability consider all
sorts of accidents. Minor and major accidents
are regarded as essentially the same, as are acci-
dents for which the individual was responsible
and those where the individual had a passive
role. The development of a good taxonomy of
accidents is crucial to this field of research.
West (1993) has begun to develop such a tax-
onomy with respect to driving accidents, mak-
ing the distinction between passive and active
accidents and then going on to describe various
common accident types (e.g., passive right-of-
way violation, active loss of control). Using this
taxonomy, Parker, West, et al. (1995) found
self-reported violations to be a better predictor
of certain accident types, particularly those
where the accident-involved driver has an
active role. Studies of this kind necessitate the
collection of large amounts of data, a factor
that may account for their scarcity. However,
future research might, at the very least, consid-
er the active-versus-passive distinction.
5. Accidents are rare and have multiple causes. As
a result, chance is the scourge of accident
research. The same unsafe behavior may in one
instance go unpunished yet in another result in
a fatal accident. All sorts of external factors
ACCIDENT LIABILITY
may influence the outcome (weather, cowork-
ers, noise, mechanical failure of a tool, etc.),
making the prediction of large amounts of vari-
ance in accident likelihood difficult, if not
impossible. Future research, having demon-
strated a relationship between an unsafe behav-
ior and accidents, should then focus on the
investigation of factors that predict the unsafe
behavior. This change of focus has already hap-
pened to some extent in relation to driving acci-
dents. It is well established that driving above
the posted speed limit is predictive of road traf-
fic accidents in the long run. However, any
attempt to demonstrate a direct link between
speeding as measured in a single study and the
occurrence of accidents within that study is
unlikely to meet with success. Most speeding
goes unpunished by negative consequences.
However, that does not mean that speeding is
not important in accident causation. Therefore,
much research is now dedicated to determining
the attitudinal and motivational characteristics
that are associated with this dangerous driving
behavior.
6. Traditionally, researchers into accident liability
have focused almost exclusively on those fac-
tors that predict inclusion in the accident
group, which in most populations is much
smaller than the no-accident group and is sub-
ject to a high chance factor. Perhaps future
research should concentrate on those people
who manage over a long period of time to avoid
an accident. Another sensible strategy would be
to shift the focus of intervention toward the
positive benefits of safety and away from the
negative effects of accidents, as research has
shown that most people do not believe an acci-
dent will actually happen to them (Taylor,
1981).
Recommendations for Organizational
Action
Traditionally, the focus of human factors in
safety has been the individual. One aim of this
review has been to demonstrate that accidents
themselves are largely meaningless as outcome
measures, being unreliable and stochastic in
nature. What the more recent research of both
cognitive and social psychologists emphasizes
is the need to study the individual in context.
To focus on the specific actions leading to an
accident and to adopt remediation strategies
on the basis of the accident analysis is likely to
be as unreliable as accidents themselves.
Investigations should be aimed at the precur-
sors to unsafe behavior. As these precursors
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667
may include organizational factors such as
poor training, incorrect procedures, and work-
place stressors, the focus of research moves
away from the individual in isolation toward
the individual in the organizational context.
Taking the multiperspective approach out-
lined previously enables us to make a number
of points that are important in terms of organi-
zational safety. First, it should be stressed that
although personality characteristics may make
some people more accident liable in some cir-
cumstances, the organization can do much in
mitigation. The research evidence available sug-
gests that selection on the basis of future acci-
dent liability is not a useful approach, given
that the causal relationships involved are com-
plex. Glendon (1979) reported that although
managers recognize their role in improving
safety, they are reluctant to accept their role in
accident prevention, considering this to be the
responsibility of the workers. It is important to
remember that exposure to a hazardous situa-
tion is a necessary step in the accident causa-
tion process. Second, it is important to monitor
the stress, both subjective and objective, that
employees experience, as unwanted stress levels
are likely to increase the chance of an accident.
Third, organizations must always keep in mind
that accidents are often determined by multiple
factors, and even at the sharp end (i.e., the
human-machine interface) may involve people
(either actively or passively), errors, violations,
and technical failures.
The multiperspective approach to accident
investigation indicates that investigators should
consider a range of possible contributing fac-
tors rather than focus solely on the perpetrators
and their actions. Although high levels of skill
may lead to low levels of errors, this very level
of skill may foster complacency and, so, have
an adverse effect on attitudes and risk percep-
tions, making violations more likely. Thus, the
accidents of experienced and inexperienced
workers may have quite different causes. This
relationship is particularly interesting and
would benefit from further investigation.
It is also important to remember that
although human factors may be the immediate
precursors to accidents, inadequacies of the
system commonly underlie these failures. In a
668
study of aircrew error, Chappelow (1989)
reported that in 44% of the 149 accidents under
investigation significant errors were made by
people remote from the critical events. These
errors included poor design of the equipment,
inadequacies in training and briefing, and ad-
ministrative failures. The distinction between
active and latent errors, first made by Reason
(1990), is now widely accepted. The majority
of research examining individual differences in
accident liability has focused on the active
errors of people at the sharp end of the system:
the drivers, the pilots, the machine operators.
However, as Reason explained, the failures of
managers, planners, and decision makers
(latent errors) can be equally catastrophic:
“very few unsafe acts [errors and violations]
result in actual damage or injury, even in rela-
tively unprotected systems. And in highly pro-
tected systems, the various layers of defence
can only be breached by the adverse con-
junction of several different causal factors”
(p. 208). Such causal factors are likely to
include latent failures at the managerial levels,
which, though difficult to detect, are easily
recoverable. A poor management decision (e.g.,
poor scheduling) may cause accidents via an
increase in errors made in response to time
pressure. It would seem therefore that investi-
gations of the human factor in accident causa-
tion should also consider the personality,
performance, and behavior of the decision
makers in organizations.
Organizations should also consider careful-
ly the ways in which they attempt to improve
safety. Sanders and McCormick (1987) identi-
fied three strategies for the reduction of
human error: training, selection, and design. Of
these they consider the design solution to be
the most effective because it does not require
the maintenance and support of either selec-
tion or training. Moreover, it is much easier to
limit the occurrence of human errors by mak-
ing them impossible, difficult, or inconsequen-
tial through design than it is to rely on fallible
human beings. However, training is the mea-
sure most widely employed to foster behav-
ioral safety. Although traditional skills training
might, by increasing the skill level of the
workforce, cause a reduction in the frequency
of errors, it will do little to reduce the inci-
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December 1998 – Human Factors
dence of deliberate deviations from safe prac-
tices. To increase the effectiveness of safety
initiatives, violations as well as errors should
be tackled. Over the last few years training
(e.g., cockpit training and then crew resource
management) has evolved in the aviation
industry (Weiner, Kanki, & Helmreich, 1993).
This form of team training aims to foster
effective crew coordination and team working
through better communications, decision mak-
ing, and leadership. By focusing on social
skills as well as cognitive factors, such training
is likely to have an impact on both error and
violation rates.
The reduction of violations requires a range
of organizational interventions. Continued
compliance with procedures that do not repre-
sent safe and efficient practice is unlikely, and
therefore organizations should strive to ensure
that all the procedures they have in place rep-
resent the optimal way of working. Having
developed good procedures, compliance with
them must be supported. Providing the cor-
rect equipment, rewarding safe behavior, en-
couraging ownership of rules, and reducing
unrealistic work demands are just some of the
ways in which organizations can encourage
compliance with procedures. (For more on this
issue see Reason, Parker, & Lawton, in press,
and Lawton, 1998.)
The multiperspective approach also sug-
gests an important role for occupational stres-
sors in accident causation. Understanding the
way in which stress arising from the work and
home environments affects both performance
and behavior is crucial for accident preven-
tion, particularly as organizations can take an
active role in reducing workplace stressors
such as unscheduled overtime, excessive work-
load, and time pressure. As Glendon and
McKenna (1995) pointed out, “because a sig-
nificant amount of stress is caused at work as
a result of organizational culture and relation-
ships, stress is a problem for organizations
and not merely individuals” (p. 204).
In summary, in the coming millennium the
role of the psychologist in industrial safety is
unlikely to focus on the search for accident-
prone individuals. The problem of accidents at
work will not be solved by selection and train-
ing alone but, in addition, requires a more
ACCIDENT LIABILITY
thoughtful analysis of the way in which indi-
vidual, cognitive, attitudinal, and organiza-
tional factors interact to generate the unsafe
behaviors implicated in accidents.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work described in this paper was fund-
ed by the Health and Safety Executive (UK).
Its contents, including any opinions and con-
clusions expressed, are those of the authors
alone and do not necessarily reflect HSE poli-
cy. We gratefully acknowledge the constructive
criticisms of the editor, William Howell, and
the three anonymous reviewers who, together,
have considerably improved upon the first
submission of this manuscript.
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Rebecca Lawton is a research fellow in the
Department of Psychology, University of Man-
chester, where she received her Ph.D. in psychology
in 1994.
Dianne Parker is a lecturer in the Department of
Psychology, University of Manchester, where she
received her Ph.D. in psychology in 1992.
Date received: February 28, 1997
Date accepted: June 5, 1998