Cognitive Bias in Commercial Pilots: An Expanded Perspective

Giacomo Belloni and Fabrizio Interlandi

In aviation, safety depends on pilots' and operators' ability to make quick and accurate decisions. However, the human brain is not infallible: it often relies on mental strategies known as heuristics, which can lead to judgment errors when combined with systematic mechanisms in the thinking process, such as cognitive biases.

Aviation history has recorded numerous incidents where cognitive biases played a key role, such as the crash of Air France Flight 447, where a misperception contributed to the loss of aircraft control. Understanding and mitigating these biases' impact is crucial to enhancing aviation safety.

This paper explores psychological and biological perspectives on cognitive biases and their implications in flight operations.

We further examine the role of Evidence-Based Training (EBT) in mitigating cognitive biases.

The Importance and Risks of Heuristics

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that simplify decision-making and are widely used by pilots in their daily operations. These intuitive strategies, developed in the brain of homo sapiens in ancient times, continue to influence our intuitive faculties, enabling fast reactions to situations without analysing every detail. 

However, while heuristics are essential, they can also contribute to cognitive biases, leading to errors when conditions are unexpected or misunderstood.

Cognitive Biases: A Psychological and Biological Overview

Cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from rationality in judgment, wherein individuals create their own subjective reality based on perceptions, experiences, and cognitive limitations. These biases influence decision-making, problem-solving, and reasoning, often leading to errors in judgment.

First introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974) in the context of heuristics and decision-making, cognitive biases have since been extensively studied in cognitive psychology, behavioural economics, and neuroscience.

Cognitive bias can be defined as "a systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make" (Kahneman, 2011). These biases are largely a result of cognitive heuristics.

According to Stanovich and West (2000), cognitive biases emerge due to the dual-process theory, which distinguishes between fast thinking and slow thinking.

While fast thinking is an intuitive, automatic, and unconscious mode of thinking that is susceptible to biases, slow thinking is a deliberative, analytical, and effortful mode of thinking that can counteract biases but requires cognitive resources.

Numerous cognitive biases have been identified in psychology, with some of the most studied being:

- Confirmation Bias: The tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence (Nickerson, 1998).

- Anchoring Bias: A reliance on the first piece of information encountered (the "anchor") when making decisions, even if it is irrelevant (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).

- Availability Heuristic: The tendency to judge the probability of events based on how easily examples come to mind (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973).

- Overconfidence Bias: A cognitive distortion in which individuals overestimate their knowledge or ability (Moore & Healy, 2008).

- Framing Effect: Decision-making is influenced by how information is presented, whether in terms of potential gains or losses (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981).

- Hindsight Bias: The "I-knew-it-all-along" phenomenon occurs when people perceive past events as having been predictable after they have occurred (Fischhoff, 1975).

- Optimism Bias is the belief that one is less likely to experience negative outcomes than others (Sharot, 2011).

Cognitive biases have both psychological and biological underpinnings.

a) Psychological Explanations:

- Heuristics and Mental Shortcuts: Tversky and Kahneman (1974) proposed that heuristics reduce cognitive effort but introduce bias.

- Cognitive Load Theory states that individuals resort to biased decision-making when their cognitive resources are limited (Sweller, 1988).

- Emotional Influence: Affective states influence judgments, leading to biases such as the affect heuristic (Slovic et al., 2007).

b) Biological Explanations:

- Neuroanatomy and Biases: The prefrontal cortex (responsible for rational thinking) and the amygdala (responsible for emotional responses) interact to shape biased decisions (Bechara et al., 1997).

- Dopaminergic System: Reward-based biases, such as optimism bias, are linked to dopamine regulation in the brain (Sharot et al., 2007).

- Evolutionary Perspectives: Some biases, like loss aversion, have evolutionary roots as survival mechanisms (Haselton et al., 2005).

Cognitive Bias and Commercial Pilots

Commercial pilots operate in complex and multifaceted environments that demand rapid and accurate decision-making. However, cognitive biases can adversely affect these decisions, leading to safety risks. 

Even in their case, these systematic deviations from rational judgment can be attributed to both psychological and biological factors:

a) Psychological Factors:

- Heuristics: Pilots often rely on mental shortcuts to expedite decision-making under time pressure. While heuristics can be efficient, they may also lead to systematic errors.

- Stress and Fatigue: High stress levels and fatigue can impair cognitive functions, increasing susceptibility to biases such as plan continuation bias.

b) Biological Factors:

- Neurochemical Influences: Neurotransmitters like dopamine play a role in reward processing and risk assessment. Imbalances can affect judgment and decision-making.

- Circadian Rhythms: Disruptions in sleep patterns can impair cognitive performance, leading to increased reliance on biases.

Understanding and mitigating these biases through structured training is essential for enhancing aviation safety.

Evidence-Based Training (EBT) in Mitigating Cognitive Biases and its Evolution

EBT programs focus on developing and assessing core competencies for today’s complicated operations.

By emphasising and training competencies such as problem-solving, decision-making, and situational awareness, EBT directly addresses the cognitive skills susceptible to biases.

EBT has the potential to more effectively address cognitive biases if it evolves to incorporate new strategies that directly target these challenges, such as:

- Incorporating Cognitive Bias Training: Educating pilots about common biases and strategies to counteract them.

- Enhancing Critical Thinking: Developing programs that promote analytical skills and adaptive thinking.

- Integrating Advanced Simulation Technologies: Using immersive simulations to replicate complex scenarios and assess pilot responses.

- Continuous Feedback Mechanisms: Implement systems that provide real-time performance feedback to facilitate improvement.

By evolving in these areas, EBT can enhance its effectiveness in managing cognitive biases and help pilots make safer, more informed decisions in high-pressure environments.

 To conclude and summarise, the human brain is an extraordinarily complex system, challenged in high-stakes environments like aviation. It must often make correct decisions quickly, under stress, and with either limited data or an overwhelming amount of information increasing the risk associated with cognitive biases, which, being an inherent part of human nature, cannot be wholly eliminated.

While significant progress has been made in improving onboard technology, there is still room to enhance human performance. We have explored how EBT is a powerful tool to reduce the impact of certain cognitive biases, though it is not a definitive solution for eliminating them.

Collaboration between pilots, neuroscience experts, and technology developers remains key to refining existing training methods and, if necessary, developing new ones to equip pilots with effective tools and strategies for managing cognitive challenges in flight.

References

Bechara, A., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. R. (1997). Role of the amygdala in decision-making. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 985(1), 356-369.

Fischhoff, B. (1975). Hindsight ≠ foresight: The effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1(3), 288-299.

Haselton, M. G., Nettle, D., & Andrews, P. W. (2005). The evolution of cognitive bias. The handbook of evolutionary psychology, 724-746.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Moore, D. A., & Healy, P. J. (2008). The trouble with overconfidence. Psychological Review, 115(2), 502.

Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175-220.

Sharot, T. (2011). The optimism bias. Current Biology, 21(23), R941-R945.

Sharot, T., Korn, C. W., & Dolan, R. J. (2007). How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality. Nature Neuroscience, 10(11), 1475-1479.

Slovic, P., Finucane, M., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2007). The affect heuristic. European Journal of Operational Research, 177(3), 1333-1352.

Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2000). Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(5), 645-665.

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257-285.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207-232.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453-458.

Cognitive Bias in Commercial Pilots: An Expanded Perspective © 2025 by Giacomo Belloni & Fabrizio Interlandi is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0