title: Sources of stress affecting pilot judgment.
abstract: The initial stages of our research on the effects of the overassessment or underassessment of the consequences of nonroutine events (a potentially important factor in decision-making by pilots) is described. Critical difficulties in the measurement of life stress are discussed and a partial solution is suggested in the form of the Life Events Questionnaire (LEQ), an instrument on which individuals report the nature of stressful events, when they happened, and how much they concern them at the time of testing. The results show that the tendency to overassess or underassess the consequences of nonroutine events is consistent within individuals, but is unaffected by life stress levels on the artificial air traffic control simulation used. Analysis of LEQ results showed that high stress subjects had much higher chronic than acute stress scores (p less than 0.001), although the chronic and acute scores were virtually identical for low stress subjects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056.
authors.forename: E C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Simmel
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cerkovnik
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: McCarthy
mesh_terms: D000337:Aerospace Medicine; D006801:Humans; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires