The Lessons We Learn: Counterfactual Thinking and Organizational Accountability after a Close Call - Don't - Statistical Data Included

Administrative Science Quarterly, Dec, 2000 by Michael W. Morris, Paul C. Moore

We investigate how individuals learn from imagined might-have-been scenarios. We hypothesize that individuals are more likely to learn when they have responded to an event with upward-directed, self-focused counterfactual thoughts, and, additionally, that this learning process is inhibited by accountability to organizational superiors. Support for these hypotheses was obtained in two studies that assessed learning by aviation pilots from the experience of near accidents. Study 1 analyzed counterfactual thoughts and lessons in narrative reports filed by experienced pilots after actual dangerous aviation incidents. Study 2 involved laboratory experiments in which college students operated a flight simulator under different conditions of organizational accountability. [*]

No topic in research on cognition in organizations is more prominent than learning from experience (March, 1994), yet in this ever-growing literature on learning, there is a curious deficit. Although many studies have analyzed how lessons are transmitted from one employee to the next (Crossan, Lane, and White, 1999), surprisingly few have addressed the prerequisite questions of how individuals draw lessons from experience in the first place and how the organizational context affects this process. Models of learning from repeated experience have been adapted to explain some cases of learning in organizations (Luthans and Kreitner, 1985; Wood and Bandura, 1989), yet these models do not explain how individuals can draw lessons rapidly without extensive experience. Organizational theorists have called for research on the cognitive strategies through which individuals learn about rare and hazardous events (Carroll, 1998) or novel and ambiguous events (Weick, 1995). Clearly, individuals do not always and cannot alw ays wait for repeated experience with an event before drawing lessons; in these situations, learning may draw on imagination rather than experience. In developing a model of how and when people learn from imagination, we can draw on the psychological literature on counterfactual thinking--thinking about what "might have been" (Roese and Olson, 1995a, 1995b).

Research on the counterfactual thoughts that students generate in response to academic outcomes, such as exam results, indicates that certain types of counterfactual thinking engender lessons about how to improve future performance and, ultimately, performance gains (Roese, 1994). Although all counterfactual thoughts may be logically relevant to learning, only certain types (with a particular structure) have the psychological effect of promoting learning. Building on the distinctions made in prior research, we analyze the type of counterfactual thinking that should foster performance-promoting lessons in organizational settings. The type we identify as efficacious involves more complex and self-critical thinking than other types. For this reason, it is likely to be inhibited in organizational contexts in which individuals feel the pressure of accountability to hierarchical superiors (Lerner and Tetlock, 1999).

We studied learning in an aviation setting with a focus on the pilot's task of avoiding accidents in the air. This focus highlights the desirability of learning from imagination--from the counterfactual thoughts spurred by a close call--in that pilots do not generally survive actual accidents and hence cannot rely on learning from experience. Yet this focus also highlights the difficulty of learning from imagination. It is not inevitable that performance-promoting lessons will be drawn from a near accident because the experience is ambiguous and can be cognitively construed in various ways. A pilot can focus either on how it could have gone worse, by imagining an actual collision that could have occurred, or on how it could have gone better, by imagining a way that the close call could have been averted entirely. Moreover, in imagining how an alternative outcome could have been produced, the pilot can either focus inwardly, by imagining changes to his or her own actions, or focus externally, by imagining chan ges to others' actions, to aviation systems, or to the natural environment. These dimensions of ambiguity allow for different types of counterfactual thinking about near accidents. And the way people resolve the ambiguity (the type of counterfactual thoughts they generate) has consequences for whether they subsequently draw performance-promoting lessons from the experience.

In our first study, we analyzed an archival sample of narrative reports by licensed pilots about experiences of near accidents in the air. We compared responses of pilots accountable to organizational superiors (i.e., those flying commercial or military planes) with those of pilots who were not similarly accountable (i.e., those flying private planes) in terms of counterfactual thinking and lessons for future performance. Our second study was a laboratory experiment with college students, piloting a flight simulator, who had been randomly assigned to either the presence or absence of organizational accountability. Students experienced a near accident on the flight simulator and then completed a flight log that tapped their thoughts about the past experience and any lessons for the future.