A security check-point at Dulles International Airport July 2, 2007, in Dulles, Virginia.
Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images
Airports of the future could use a new technology to get you through security faster and improve safety: remote screening stations that minimize the effect of a little-known cognitive bias called satisfaction of search (SOS).
It's always in the last place you look, the saying goes, but SOS describes those times when it isn't. Research has consistently shown that people have trouble locating second and third objects in searches where there may be multiple targets, which could be one of the factors in the Transportation Security Administration'sfailure to stop 95 percent of the dangerous items in a 2015 internal test by Homeland Security, according to a study published in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Now, pilot programs in Brussels and Bristol, England, as well as a new facility in Calgary International Airport in Alberta, are aiming to improve efficiency and security with remote screening areas where agents are physically isolated from the hustle and bustle of the checkpoint, a measure recommended by SOS researchers. Brussels has already seenits success rate increase by 16 percent, which security experts attribute to better focus. But SOS suggests that there may be more to the story, experts say. [Why You Forget: 5 Strange Facts About Memory] https://www.livescience.com/57357-mental-bias-tech-could-improve-airport-security.html
