Industrial Psychology: Introduction

Industrial/organizational psychology

is a branch of psychology that applies the principles of psychology to the workplace.

I/O psychologists and HRM professionals involved in personnel psychology such as (enumeration)

analyzing jobs, recruiting applicants, selecting employees, determining salary levels, training employees, and evaluating employee performance.

organizational psychology

are concerned with the issues of leadership, job satisfaction, employee motivation, organizational communication, conflict management, organizational change, and group processes within an organization

James Cattell (1860-1944)

was one of the first researchers to identify the importance of recognizing individual differences when trying to predict and understand human behavior.

Hugo Münsterberg

Published Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, which covered topics such as employee selection, employee training, and effective advertising.

Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955)

was one of the first psychologists to apply psychology to advertising, management, and personnel selection. In 1903, Scott published two books: The Theory of Advertising and Psychology of Advertising.

Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955)

1911 he published two more books, Influencing Men in Business and Increasing Human Efficiency in Business. In 1916 a newly formed division in the Carnegie Institute of Technology hired Scott to conduct applied research on employee selection

Robert Yerkes (1876-1956)

•He organized a group under the Surgeon General's Office (SGO) that developed methods for screening and selecting enlisted men. They developed the Army Alpha test to measure mental abilities. The Army Beta test was a non-verbal form of the test that was administered to illiterate and non-English-speaking draftees.

Lillian Gilbreth (1878-1972)

The _____' work in time-and-emotion studies quantified and analyzed the factors affecting workplace efficiency: the number of motions involved in a task and, subsequently, the time required to perform it.

Frederick W. Taylor (1911).

Founder of scientific management

time and motion studies

procedures in which work tasks are broken down into simple component movements and the movements timed to develop a more efficient method for performing the tasks

Elton Mayo (1880-1949)

Mayo helped to lay the foundation for the human relations movement, and was known for his industrial research including the Hawthorne Studies

Hawthorne effect

A change in a subject's behavior caused simply by the awareness of being studied

human factors psychology, or ergonomics

During the Cold War years of the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of the defense industry further spurred the development of a specialty area called engineering psychology (today referred to as ___

Organizational Downsizing

a strategy of reducing an organization's workforce to improve organizational efficiency and/or competitiveness

outsourcing of work

contracting with another organization to perform a broad set of services ; firms usually promise to deliver the same or better quality at a lower cost

outsourcing of work

increase output and can reduce overhead costs associated with the personnel needed to do the tasks in house.

Talent Management

the goal-oriented and integrated process of planning, recruiting, developing, managing, and compensating employees

1st step in research process

Define the problem

2nd step in research process

Form a hypothesis

3rd step in research process

Choose experimental design

4th step in research process

collect data

5th step in research process

analyze and interpret:

6th step in research process

Drawing conclusions based on findings

treatment group

the participants in an experiment who are exposed to the level of the independent variable that involves a medication, therapy, or intervention

independent variable

The experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied.

dependent variable

The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable.

control group

In an experiment, the group that is not exposed to the treatment; contrasts with the experimental group and serves as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment.

extraneous variable

In an experiment, a variable other than the IV that might cause unwanted changes in the DV.

random assignment

assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups

elimination

remove extraneous variable from the experiment

constancy of conditions

Means that subjects in all experimental groups are exposed to identical conditions except for the differing experimental treatments.

Balancing

Distributing the effects of an extraneous variable across the different treatment conditions of the experiment

quasi-experiment

•follows the experimental design but lacks random assignment and/or manipulation of an independent variable.

correlational method

a research design that examines the relationship among or between variables as they naturally occur.

Obtrusive observation research

Observation research in which the subjects are aware that they are being observed

unobtrusive observation

an observation in a study made indirectly, through physical traces of behavior, or made by someone who is hidden or is posing as a bystander

self-report

•measurement methods relying on research participants' reports of their own behavior or attitudes e.g surveys

Reliability

consistency of measurement

test-retest reliability

a method for determining the reliability of a test by comparing a test taker's scores on the same test taken on separate occasions

split-half reliability

A measure of reliability in which a test is split into two parts and an individual's scores on both halves are compared.

parallel forms reliability

consistency between/among alternate versions of the same instrument; e.g. creating 2 parallel forms of a questionnaire (with difficult questions) and both tests show correlation

interrater reliability

the amount of agreement in the observations of different raters who witness the same behavior

Validity

The ability of a test to measure what it is intended to measure

face validity

extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring

content validity

the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest

predictive validity

the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure

construct validity

the extent to which variables measure what they are supposed to measure

two randomized group design

Participants are randomly assigned to different levels of the IV. Random assignment is meant to equalize any and all initial differences between groups. This minimizes error variance between groups.

repeated treatment design

design in which a treatment is withdrawn and then presented a second time

two matched groups design

an experimental design with two treatment conditions and with subjects who are matched on a subject variable thought to be highly related to the dependent variable

More than two groups

ANOVA, one IV and 3 or more TCs