Everyday cognitive and psychological traps catch us all out, and occasionally end in disaster. So what are we doing to protect ourselves?

Confirmation bias can result in catastrophe NSF Photo / Alamy

The human brain is capable of great creative feats – and the odd catastrophic piece of decision-making. We lose focus or focus too much, we get scared or overconfident – we succumb to bias: minor human errors that in our complex world can lead to major disasters.

Read more: Effortless thinking Sloppy thinking is at the root of many modern ills. We delve into nine key ideas that come naturally to us to find out why they are often so misguided

Fortunately, our growing understanding of what makes us tick is giving us new ways to avoid these glitches and more – and so harness our minds to avoid damage to life and limb.

Confirmation bias: We only believe what we already think

WHEN BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded in 2010, the flames were visible 50 kilometres away. Before the blowout, rig staff had tested the concrete seal on a freshly excavated well before removing the 1.5-kilometre drilling column. The results indicated that the seal was not secure and removing the column might result in a catastrophic blowout. So why were the signs ignored?

Disaster analyst Andrew Hopkins of the Australian National University in Canberra says the workers viewed the test as a means of confirming that the well was sealed, not finding out whether it was or not. When the test failed, workers explained it away using the “bladder effect”, which attributes elevated pressure in a drilling pipe to a flexing rubber seal rather than rising oil and gas. The effect was subsequently dismissed as a plausible explanation by an …