Captainitis - The Danger of Blindly Following Authority

"Captainitis" is the phenomenon where crew members of an airplane fail to correct an obvious error made by the captain, sometimes leading to a crash. It's a dangerous example of blindly following authority.

This is a specific and extreme case of the "if an expert says so, it must be true" heuristic. Even when the stakes are life and death, people may default to automatic responding and defer to the authority figure, rather than engaging in controlled responding and questioning the decision.

This illustrates how the pressures of a situation can lead to a dangerous reliance on mental shortcuts, even when personal well-being is at stake.