Black Box Thinking: Growth Mindset and the Secrets of High Performance

by Matthew Syed

A quick example: in the 1940s the famous Boeing B-17 bomber was involved in a series of seemingly inexplicable runway accidents. The US Army Air Corps responded by commissioning Alphonse Chapanis, a psychologist with a PhD from Yale, to undertake an investigation. By studying the crashes – their chronology, dynamics, and psychological elements – Chapanis identified poor cockpit design as a contributing factor.29 He found that the switches controlling the flaps in B-17s were identical to the switches controlling the landing gear (the wheels), and were placed side by side. This was not a problem when the pilots were relaxed and flying conditions perfect. But under the pressure of a difficult landing, pilots were pulling the wrong lever. Instead of retracting the flaps, to reduce speed, they were retracting the wheels, causing the plane to bellyflop onto the runway, with catastrophic results. Chapanis came up with the idea of changing the shape of the levers so that they resembled the equipment they were linked to. A small rubber wheel was attached to the landing-gear switch and a small flap shape to the flaps control. The buttons now had an intuitive meaning, easily identified under pressure. What happened? Accidents of this kind disappeared overnight.