2. What is I/O Psychology?
The branch of psychology concerned with the
application of psychological principles in the workplace
Second only to clinical psychology in the number of
practitioners
Found in four sectors of the economy: industry,
universities, government, and consulting firms
3. Differences in I/O and other
psychology fields
Differs in the settings where it is practiced
Differs in content
Differs in approach
Does not differ in its reliance on the scientific method
for its theories and research
4. Settings
Practiced in work settings
Makes use of findings of other branches of psychology:
Human motivation
Attitude formation
Psychology of groups (team performance, leadership
dynamics)
Psychophysiology (job stress)
Theories of adjustment (job loss)
Intelligence testing applied to develop tests that might
assist in hiring decisions
5. Content
Three primary areas of interest:
Personnel psychology
Organizational psychology
Human factors (or human engineering) psychology
6. A Systems Approach
Changes in one facet of I/O psychology usually affects
the other facets
Example – changes in the design of a task so that it is
more complex (human factors activity) may have
substantial impact on worker satisfaction
(organizational topic) or who might do best at that task
(personnel topic)
7. A Brief History
Personnel Psychology was the first of the three I/O
subfields to appear
Intelligence testing used in WW I to identify recruits
with greatest likelihood to become successful officers
Adapted by industry following the war
8. Organizational Psychology
History
Money was thought to be the only motivator in the early
20th century
Job satisfaction was of little interest to employers
Intelligence was something to be avoided in workers
9. Organizational Psychology
History
Research team led by Mayo (1930) discovered that
employees’ attitudes toward supervisors and company
had substantial effects on productivity regardless of pay
level
This launched the human relations movement, which
gave birth to interest in job satisfaction, work
motivation, and leadership
10. Human Factors Psychology
History
Began with WW II when aircraft had become much more
complex and there were more accidents than ever
before (cockpit instrument array not standardized)
Airplane cockpits thus began to be designed with
standardization of location of controls & instruments in
the cockpit to decrease human error
Human factors psychology was born out of this need to
design the best & safest combination of human &
machine
11. In the next slides
we will consider
each of the three
facets of I/O
psychology in
greater detail
12. Personnel Psychology
Selecting correct persons for the job
I/O psychologist would go about the selection process for
any job in the same way
First step – determining the most important duties of the
job in question
Second step – list human attributes (skills, abilities,
knowledge, experience, and personality characteristics)
that will be necessary for success
Third step – develop a way to measure those attributes in
applicants
Final step – deciding who will get the job based on results
of those assessments
13. First Step - Job Analysis
A method for breaking a job into its constituent parts –
which parts are the most important?
Then determine the knowledge, skills, abilities, or other
personal characteristics necessary for successful
completion of the job’s central tasks
When these key attributes have been identified, then
an appropriate test can be selected or developed.
14. Second Step – Test
Administration and Interviewing
Standardized tests used extensively
In recent years, personality testing has attracted
increased interest as a means to enhance the hiring
process – a result of the appearance of standardized
tests to measure the Big Five personality traits
Integrity tests – measure trustworthiness but may not be
as valid
Credit checks – may be considered intrusive by some
employers
15. Test Administration and
Interviewing
Personnel psychologist must verify that the tests used to
select the best job candidates are successful in doing so
Involves statistical correlation of test scores with
performance measures if the latter are available
This process is known as validation
16. Interviewing
Two types – structured and unstructured
Structured interviews more like standardized tests
same questions asked of all candidates and are based on
attributes necessary for success on the job in question
Have clear guidelines for evaluation of answers
Can give information not otherwise tested, such as oral
comprehension, listening skills, and motivation
17. Interviewing
Unstructured interviews
Nonstandard questions with no clear right or wrong
answers
No method of assigning a score to an applicant
Many employers rely heavily on this type of interview but
research suggests it is highly suggestive and far from
optimal
18. Equal Opportunity
Employment and Testing
Mental ability tests have been portrayed as instruments
of discrimination as minorities often score lower
Physical ability tests may discriminate against women,
older persons, and persons with disabilities
The EEOC in the US wants to ensure that all testing is
fair to all applicants, regardless of race, religion,
gender, disability, or age.
19. Equal Opportunity
Employment
This simple goal has led to a complex tangle of legal,
administrative, and philosophical disputes
Hiring quotas were in effect until 1991; since then many
companies have continued to try to diversify their
workforce
Much of the debate is about whether tests used in hiring
are valid
When tests focus on several important attributes it is
likely that ethnic minority applicants do better
20. New Trends and Challenges
Training and education
Performance assessment of current employees
Hiring airport screeners by DHS an important part of
work of DHS I/O psychologist that has implications on
national security
21. Organizational Psychology
Interest is in how organizational factors influence
workers’ social and emotional functioning
Also interested in work motivation, job satisfaction,
teams, leadership, and organizational culture
22. Work Motivation
Why do some workers work hard and others appear lazy
and uncooperative?
Herzberg’s job enrichment theory – increasing
motivation can be accomplished by enriching the job
and giving worker more responsibilities and challenges
Skinner’s reinforcement theory – jobs acquire interest
only through their association with extrinsic or external
rewards
23. Work Motivation
Each theory has some value, but neither applies all the
time
Expectancy theory – proposes people act on a prediction
of what rewards they will receive
Self-efficacy theory – individuals gradually develop
confidence (or lack of it) about abilities to overcome
obstacles and successfully complete difficult tasks.
Confidence can be enhanced or diminished by actual
work experiences
24. Work Motivation
Self-regulation theory
Involves making and executing plans, initiating and
inhibiting behaviors, taking responsibility, and exhibiting
self-discipline
Important in “fitting in” with colleagues
25. Work Motivation
Goal-setting theory
Proposes best way to increase effort is to set specific,
challenging goals for a worker
Same principle as in athletic training
Even if goal not met, performance better than if you had
not set specific goals
26. Job Satisfaction
More research on this than almost any subject in I/O
psychology and have led to basic findings about job
satisfaction are:
Interesting and challenging work
Pleasant co-workers
Adequate pay and other financial benefits
Opportunities for advancement
Effective and supportive supervisors
Acceptable company policies
27. Job Satisfaction
The absence of factors previously listed leads to job
dissatisfaction
Job dissatisfaction related to increased absenteeism,
sick leave, and employee turnover
Job dissatisfaction can cause physical and psychological
damage
Employers job is to remove obstacles to success
28. Work Teams
A result of downsizing in 1980s – unusual in US before
that
Teams have effect of increasing accountability and
ownership at lower levels of organization
Virtual teams – came about with advent of internet
Can have problems with time zones, inadequate face-toface contact, and excessive reliance on technology
30. Organizational Culture and
Climate
Every organization has a personality, or “culture”
Climate consists of shared perceptions among workers
about specific aspects of the workplace environment
I/O psychologists are primarily interested in how
employees experience organizational culture and
climate
31. Balancing Work and Other
Spheres of Life
Research in this area focuses on the design and
evaluation of programs intended to reduce stress at
work
Time off from work, extent of non-work related hassles,
and level of non-work stress found to be significant
correlates of subsequent work-week performance as
well as of employee health
32. Human Factors Psychology
Human factors specialists seek to understand the
human-machine relationship in various environments
Design work environments and control panels for
equipment in ways to reduce mistakes and decrease
work stress
Robotics in the worksite is one newer challenge for
human factors specialists; also distance education
33. Systems Approach to Work
Safety
Workplace safety can serve as an example of the
interrelation among personnel psychology,
organizational psychology, and human factors
psychology
Consider the problem of pizza delivery drivers who have
excessive accidents when trying to deliver pizzas in
under 30 minutes
Editor's Notes
Personnel psychology deals with determining whether people have the knowledge, skills, abilities, and personality necessary to perform various types of work effectively. It is concerned with the broad topic of employment testing and related topics such as job training, test validation, interviewing, and employment discrimination. The goal is to find the workers who have the right attributes to fit the demands of the job.
Organizational psychology is concerned with how people adapt emotionally and socially to working in complex human organizations. It focuses on work motivation, job satisfaction, leadership, organizational culture, teamwork, and related topics.
Human factors (engineering) psychology examines the way in which work environments can be designed or modified to match the capabilities and limitations of human beings. Goal is to fit the work environment or technology to human capabilities in order to promote efficiency, effectiveness, and safety.
Consider the simple act of computerizing what had previously been a manual task. This also changes other aspects of the work. A clerk may no longer have to go to the filing cabinet to insert or retrieve documents, since this can now be done electronically without leaving one’s desk. As a result the clerk can become more isolated and lose opportunities for social interaction with other workers. In addition, introduction of the computer changes the skill and ability mix necessary for success on the job.
Transformational leadership describes the leader who adapts well to change and persuades his workers to do so also. This is done by making workers more aware of the importance of what they are doing, persuading them to put the good of the organization or team ahead of their own self-interest, and appealing to their achievement and mastery needs.
Charismatic leadership depends more on the sheer force of the leader’s personality. They elicit trust in others, are willing to take personal risks, and are sensitive to others’ needs. They are able to get followers to suspend disbelief and accept challenges they would ordinarily reject.
Emancipatory leadership – leaders make sure that those affected by leadership’s decision making play a role in those decisions and are responsible for their implementation. They understand their own boundaries and and biases, and strive to empower their employees rather than to rule them.
Different companies cultivate different corporate cultures. The culture of a Silicon Valley company might hinge on innovation; the culture of a fast food corporation on time urgency. Virtually every organization that produces goods and services that could affect public safety at the broadest levelnow attempts to impress on workers the need to commit to a culture of safety.
Research in this area has focused on nine topics:
Work-family conflict
Work-role stress
Work-family assistance
Work schedules
Job-related relocation
Career and job-related outcomes
Gender and the relationship between work and family domains
Challenges of dual-earner couples
Relationships among life domains
Whenever you get into a new rental car and search for the controls of the lights and windshield wipers, you are dealing with a human factors issue.
How could accidents be reduced? Working from a personnel psychology perspective, one approach would be to determine whether particular individuals seem to have more accidents than others. If that is the case, experts could examine the basic abilities of these people and institute either a training or selection program to reduce the accident rate.
An organizational psychologist might approach the problem by assuming that drivers are being strongly influenced by a speed culture at work.
Alternatively, it might be just as effective to work from a human factors perspective and prevent a driver from delivering more than one pizza every 30 minutes. A “new” and safer job would have been designed.
The safest system would probably be achieved by using all three approaches rather than just one. This approach would include a careful selection and training program, a work environment that did not glorify speed and time urgency, and a set of tasks optimally arranged for safe and efficient deliveries.
