title: Attentional bias toward safety predicts safety behaviors.
abstract: Safety studies have primarily focused on how explicit processes and measures affect safety behavior and subsequent accidents and injuries. Recently, safety researchers have paid greater attention to the role of implicit processes. Our research focuses on the role of attentional bias toward safety (ABS) in workplace safety. ABS is a basic, early-stage cognitive process involving the automatic and selective allocation of attentional resources toward safety cues, which reflect the implicit motivational state of employees regarding safety goal. In this study, we used two reaction time-based paradigms to measure the ABS of employees in three studies: two modified Stroop tasks (Studies 1 and 2) and a visual dot-probe task (Study 3). Results revealed that employees with better safety behavior showed significant ABS (Study 2), and greater ABS than employees with poorer safety behavior (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, ABS was positively associated with the perceived safety climate and safety motivation of employees, both of which mediate the effect of ABS on safety behavior (Study 3). These results contributed to a deeper understanding of how early-stage automatic perceptual processing affects safety behavior. The practical implications of these results were also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Yaoshan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China. Electronic address: liyj@psych.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Yongjuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Guangxi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Nuclear Power Operation of China, Wuhan, Hubei, PR China.
authors.forename: Weidong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Nuclear Power Operation of China, Wuhan, Hubei, PR China.
authors.forename: Zhongxiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Shen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001519:Behavior; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D055848:Nuclear Power Plants; D015279:Organizational Culture; D012449:Safety; D057190:Stroop Test
keywords: Attentional bias; Implicit cognition; Safety behavior; Safety climate; Safety motivation