The 'fly in the ointment' (prefered to references to woodpiles....
) in the Psycho's theory is that the Captain arrived on the flight deck fresh to the situation and WITHOUT the 'cognative bias' and should therefore have been able to freely analyse the situation.
That is exactly what I thought and the way I objected the "bias-approach" at first. But then he (the psycho
) told me about a series of experiments they did in the army: A commanding officer (CO) is called by his NCOs to handle a specific situation. One group of COs was told to enter the command and control center, call for an elaborate report by his NCOs and then quickly decide on the situation. The second group was told to enter the COC, and gather the required the information by having a "question-and-answer-game" and - when the CO is sure to have all the information he needs - decide quickly on the situation.
If the investigating psychologists fed erroneous information into the process, group one had a significantly higher percentage of COs who made wrong decisions because they somehow trusted the NCOs report and often did not double-check the information given to them.
Now back to AF447: the Captain arrives on the flight deck, everything has gone awry, he asks for a report, time is running fast. He was not on the flight deck when things started. He listens to the report. His training should have made him "step back and reconsider", but his mind is still trying to make sense of the report. Before he is able to come to his own conclusions, the PF (and maybe the PNF) overwhelm him with more (erroneous) information. It may have been very easy to slip into the same "reality" as the PF (and the PNF). Once in, there is no easy way out...
But you are right BOAC: the "man-machine interface" and the specific training should be examined very closely.