Alert Fatigue Research
DOI: 10.20944/preprints202603.1014.v1The Cry
Wolf Test
When every alarm sounds the same, how long before you stop listening?
You're on watch. Your job: respond to critical alarms.
When you see a RED alarm, tap RESPOND immediately. Ignore routine alerts (amber) and sensor glitches (grey).
Two practice alarms first…
What Just Happened?
You just experienced the cry wolf effect. When your instruments kept firing alarms that turned out to be nothing — sensor glitches, irrelevant readings — your brain learned to ignore them. By the time a real critical alarm fired in Phase 2, you were slower to respond or missed it entirely. This is not a personal failing. It is a documented psychological response (Bliss & Gilson, 1998). On a real boat, it happens over hours and days rather than minutes, but the effect is the same.
The solution isn't fewer alarms. It's smarter ones. Alarms that tell you what's happening — in words — so your brain doesn't have to decode whether this beep is the seventh false positive or the one that matters.
This quiz is based on published research into alert fatigue at sea. Read the study
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