J.A. Jacko (Ed.): Human-Computer Interaction, Part IV, HCII 2009, LNCS 5613, pp. 723–730, 2009. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009 The Differences of Aviation Human Factors between Individualism and Collectivism Culture Wen-Chin Li 1 , Don Harris 2 , Lon-Wen Li 3 , and Thomas Wang 4 1 Psychology Department, National Defense University, Taiwan, R.O.C. w.li.2002@cranfield.ac.uk 2 Human Factors Department, Cranfield University, United Kingdom 3 Training Centre, National Defense University, Taiwan, R.O.C. 4 Flight Safety Division, Aviation Safety Council, Taiwan, R.O.C. Abstract. Culture is at the root of action; it underlies the manner by which people communicate and develop attitudes towards life. This research examined statistical differences in the 18 categories of Human factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS, Shappell & Wiegmann, 2003) across 523 aviation accidents in the Republic of China (a collective culture) and 119 aviation accidents in the USA (an individual culture) . The result suggests that the culture of individualism seems to be superior for promoting aviation safety compared to collectivist cultures, however, factors such as the design of the aircraft, the management procedures and the nature of safety regulation all have a strong Western influence from the individualist culture. All of these factors are culturally congruent with the USA. It is essential to identify the potential causal roots for these differences from the underlying factors in these aviation mishaps, and identify what kind of factors drive people to act or react to dynamic situations that either lead to an accident help to develop an effective accident prevention strategy. Keywords: Accident Investigation, Aviation Safety, Cross-culture, Human Factors. 1 Introduction It is generally acknowledged that the accident rates differ in different regions of the world, Asia and Africa are higher than Europe and America. The regional differences in accident rates suggest that there might be something further beneath simply human error in aviation operations [6]. In order to survive, aircraft operators attempt to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks. If most of the people in a society have the same way of doing things, it becomes the content of the culture. Culture is the means by which people communicate and develop their knowledge about attitudes towards life. Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret their experience and guide their actions [4]. There are fundamental difference between Chinese minds and Western. In science and technology, Western Truth stimulated analytic thinking, whereas Eastern Virtue led to synthetic thinking. Through their different logics East and West followed