Maintaining sensing influence, a new concept to recover from undesired decision behavior

In critical situations decision-makers (i.e. pilots) may perform errors. The number of errors could be reduced if it would be possible to recover from undesired human behavior. Therefore the system theoretical concept of maintaining sensing influence is introduced. It assumes that whatever a human (the actor) decides or does, he always maintains sensing influence. If the actor´s sensing influence (SI) threatens to disappear, he may switch to another context by which his SI is maintained. When the observer uses the situational context, he would value the actor´s behavior as undesired. Having identified the context switch, SI becomes a criterion by which the observer can understand the actor´s undesired behavior. This understanding can be used to recover desired behavior. The concept has been tested successfully in a student counseling setting. The student setting appears to be comparable to the pilot setting and, therefore, it may be useful to evaluate this concept in the pilot setting as well.