As with any task, the more a person drives, the more familiar they become with the vehicle. When their comfort level increases, a driver becomes more likely to let their guard down in less threatening areas. This is textbook complacency, a dangerous human factor that can be challenging to recognize because of how naturally it develops.

The following example will walk you through the channeling complacency model, which illustrates how the part of the brain responsible for keeping us alert and in control during new tasks (the prefrontal cortex) becomes less active as familiarity sets in and the autopilot part of the brain (the striatum) takes over. Since complacency can happen in any industry, it’s helpful to look at a detailed real-world example that most of us have gone through—driving a car or forklift—to help recognize the pattern in action.

Starting to get comfortable with driving

At this stage, complacency is low to mid-level; the mental checklist you go over when completing a new task is still present in the prefrontal cortex and striatum, but complacency justifies not checking all of the boxes on the list.

Signs of complacency include letting certain things slide because it will be fine just this one time, like:

•         Not doing a circle check before getting in the vehicle to drive.
•         Not wearing a seatbelt when traveling a short distance.
•         The radio is on and much louder than before.
•         The mirrors are consulted less.
•         Hands are relaxed from their set positions.
•         Turns are taken faster because they are a lot easier to maneuver.
•         Changing lanes is done more carelessly.
•         Rolling stops instead of counting to three happen at stop signs.
•         Less attention is paid to the pedestrians outside the crosswalks on the forklift.

Overall, awareness of the perceived risks is not as heightened as when the task was first performed.

Becoming more comfortable with driving

Familiarity breeds complacency. At this stage, the threat hasn’t gone away, but mid- to high-level complacency sets in because there were no repercussions when the task was previously performed. Activity in the prefrontal cortex has significantly decreased as the striatum prepares to take over. The repetitive actions become automatic—things start to be done as a force of habit instead of being done to protect from the surrounding hazards.

The mental checklist is not consulted as tasks are mostly done from memory. In a forklift, this level of complacency may see the operator forgo using a spotter completely and try to justify it or automatically adjust the mirrors in any vehicle without much thought.

While still thinking about safety in other areas, the automaticity of tasks at this stage shows a more advanced level of complacency. Driving examples include consciously driving over the speed limit or going faster than is safe for a forklift. This type of risk is easy to justify—going with the flow of traffic in a car (habitual), or saying, “This will be a one-off” to ensure a faster arrival time (intentional).

Habitual speeding allows a driver to get comfortable going over the speed limit regularly and when an occasion requires them to intentionally go even faster to avoid being late, they feel safe doing so without giving it a second thought. But this disregards the fact that higher speeds leave less time for the driver to react. Not to mention, it will take a vehicle going at a faster speed longer to stop safely. It’s not that the drivers don’t know about these risks, but complacency stops them from feeling threatened by these risks.

Completely comfortable with driving

“I could do this drive with my eyes closed.” These are the words of a completely complacent driver.  

There’s a false understanding of causation when it comes to driving complacency.  An example of this causation is the belief that driving more trips in the same vehicle on the same roads will cause that person to be a better driver, with a lower risk of an incident occurring. But as drivers become “better drivers,” their confidence overshadows their risk perception, increasing their vulnerability to hazards.  

At this stage, the striatum has completely taken over and the mental checklist is not consulted at all. When people are very comfortable with driving, they may take their eyes off the road and look at other things while moving their vehicle, like the radio, their GPS or their phone. Some people may even claim to be good at driving while using their devices.

Another sign of being completely complacent while driving is highway hypnosis—pulling into the driveway with no recollection of the drive, “coming to” once the vehicle is parked. Driving the same route daily can result in habits taking over, essentially allowing the drive to happen on autopilot or muscle memory. Changing lanes automatically, making the same turns and stopping at stop signs and traffic lights—all without incident or awareness.

Because it’s so familiar, the conscious mind isn’t devoted to paying attention and an entire portion of the trip is blanked out.

On a forklift, inattentional blindness can similarly cause a number of near misses with pedestrians in crosswalks that the driver might not have even registered. Unlike highway hypnosis, inattentional blindness happens when you’re so focused on one particular thing that you fail to notice other things going on around it.

There’s an increased risk of this happening when you’re in a state of complacency, where you’re not at all concerned about the surrounding risks. Thankfully, understanding how complacency can start to develop is an important step in identifying this human factor, which can, in turn, help counteract it with special interventions like habit building. 

This blog post is an excerpt adapted from Fighting Familiarity: Overcoming Complacency in the Workplace. It defines complacency, discusses individual and organizational complacency, offers insights into its contributing factors, and provides a straightforward overview of what organizations can do about it. Download it to proactively reduce complacency in your workplace.