Why Experienced People Make Bad Decisions in High-Risk Environments

Experience is supposed to protect you.

It’s supposed to make situations clearer, decisions faster, and outcomes safer. But in high-risk environments, experience often does the opposite — it creates confidence where caution is needed most.

Some of the worst decisions made in wilderness travel, rescue operations, and tactical environments are not made by beginners.

They are made by people who have “been here before”.

Experience Doesn’t Fail — Assumptions Do

Experience is valuable. It builds pattern recognition, confidence, and speed. The problem is that under stress, those same strengths quietly turn into liabilities.

When pressure rises, the brain leans harder on familiar patterns. It fills in gaps. It assumes today will behave like yesterday.

That’s how experienced people stop evaluating situations and start recognising them — even when the details don’t match.

This is one of the most common decision-making failure patterns seen across high-risk environments.

How Stress Changes the Way Decisions Are Made

Under stress, the brain prioritises speed over accuracy.

This isn’t a flaw — it’s biology. But in complex environments, it comes with consequences:

• Situational awareness narrows
• Alternative options disappear
• Contradictory information is ignored
• Confidence increases even as accuracy drops

This is why decision errors often don’t feel like mistakes at the time. They feel efficient. Decisive. Familiar.

That’s also why tunnel vision under pressure is such a dangerous force multiplier.

Confidence Is Not the Same as Clarity

One of the most misleading signals in high-risk environments is confidence.

Confidence feels good. It feels stabilising. But confidence without verification is often the first warning sign that decision quality is slipping.

Experienced operators are especially vulnerable to this trap because confidence is reinforced by past success. When something has worked repeatedly before, the brain resists slowing down — even when conditions are changing.

At that point, decisions are no longer driven by evidence.
They’re driven by momentum.

The Silent Role of Decision Fatigue

Another factor that quietly degrades judgement is decision fatigue.

Every choice consumes mental energy. Route choices. Weather calls. Equipment decisions. Leadership decisions. By the time something goes wrong, the decision-making system is already tired.

Decision fatigue doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t feel like confusion. It feels like certainty.

This is why decision quality often drops late in the day or late in an operation — even among highly capable people.

What Professionals Do Differently Under Pressure

Professionals don’t rely on confidence alone.

They actively protect their decision-making.

That means:

• Slowing decisions deliberately when stakes rise
• Challenging assumptions instead of defending them
• Looking for disconfirming evidence
• Creating pauses to reset situational awareness
• Separating experience from entitlement

In other words, professionals treat judgement as a skill that degrades under stress, not a fixed trait.

 Want a simple way to interrupt bad decisions before they escalate?

Download the Decision Bias Awareness Card — a short, field-ready reference designed to help you recognise and reset decision errors under pressure.

Why This Matters in the Real World

Decision errors don’t usually cause immediate failure.

They cause directional drift.

A slightly worse route. A delayed turnaround. A compromised safety margin. One assumption too many left unchallenged.

By the time the consequences are obvious, recovery options are limited and expensive — in time, energy, or safety.

That’s why decision-making failures are so overrepresented in incident reports, rescues, and after-action reviews.

Common Traps Experienced People Fall Into

These patterns appear again and again in high-risk environments:

• Treating familiarity as safety
• Relying on past success instead of current conditions
• Ignoring early discomfort or doubt
• Defending a plan instead of testing it
• Mistaking speed for effectiveness

Experience doesn’t remove these risks.
It often hides them.

What This Means for Leaders and Solo Operators Alike

Whether you’re leading a team or operating alone, the principle is the same:

Your greatest risk is not what you don’t know.
It’s what you assume no longer needs checking.

Situational awareness and decision quality must be actively protected — especially when stress, fatigue, or confidence are high.

Key Takeaways

• Experience does not make you immune to bad decisions
• Stress narrows perception and reinforces assumptions
• Confidence can mask declining judgement
• Decision fatigue feels like certainty, not confusion
• Professional decision-making requires deliberate resets

A Final Thought

Situational awareness is not instinct.
It is trained, reinforced, and protected.

The most dangerous words in high-risk environments are:

“I’ve done this a hundred times.”