I/O PSYCHOLOGY

MAJOR FIELDS OF I/O PSYCHOLOGY

Personnel Psychology – analyzing jobs, recruiting applicants, selecting employees, determining salary levels,
training employees, and evaluating employee performance.
Organizational Psychology – issues of leadership, job satisfaction, employee motivation, organization
communication, conflict management, organizational change, and group processes within an organization.
Human Factors/Ergonomics – concentrate on workplace design, human-machine interaction, ergonomics, and
physical fatigue and stress. The safety and efficiency of the human-machine interaction is the focus of
ergonomics. (Engineering x psychology)

History of I/O Psych:

Walter Dill Scott – wrote Theory of Advertising(1903), in which Psychology was first applied to business.
Hugo Munsterberg – “father of I/O Psychology”, published Psychology and Industrial Efficiency.
Frederick Taylor – “father of Scientific Management”
Wilhelm Wundt – opened the 1st psychological department at Harvard
Robert Yerkes – introduced psych testing to the military: Army Beta & Alpha tests
John Watson – served as a Major in WW1 and developed perceptual and motor tests for potential pilots.
Henry Gantt –increasing the efficiency with which cargo ships were built & repaired.
Thomas Edison – famous inventor who also understood the importance of selecting the right employees, and
created an extremely difficult 150-item knowledge test.
Kurt Lewin – began the research on Group Dynamics
Frank Gilbreth & Lillian Moller Gilbreth – one of the first scientists to improve productivity and reduce fatigue
by studying the motions used by workers.
- They had a big family and was the inspiration for the movie “Cheaper by the dozen”
Hawthorne Studies – demonstrated that employee behavior was complex and that the interpersonal
interactions between managers and employees played a tremendous role in employee behavior. This inspired
to increase focus on human relations in the workplace. This was led by Elton Mayo. (1920’s)
 Hawthorne Effect – employees become more productive when they are being studied and given
attention from their managers.
Brief Timeline
1903 I/O psychology started because of Walter D. Scott
1910’s WW1 (emergence of I/O Psych)
1920’s Hawthorne Studies
1930’s I/O psychology expanded its scope; focused on human
relations due to Hawthorne studies
1960’s Characterized by the passage of several major pieces of
civil rights legislation; HRs focused on developing fair
selection techniques
1970’s Employee satisfaction and motivation
1980’s – 1990’s  Four major changes in I/O Psych
 Fairly sophisticated techniques & methods of analysis
2000’s Advancement in technology

WHY CONDUCT RESEARCH IN AN ORGANIZATION?

 To gain a better understanding of human behavior
 To improve the well- being of employees and managers
 To understand and improve management process
 To apply psychological knowledge to specific organization problems
THE LOCATION OF THE RESEARCH
 Laboratory Research – one disadvantage is External Validity/generizability, meaning if it works in one
firm – would it work for others too?
 Field research – disadvantage is Internal Validity ; ethical dilemma includes informed consent
VALIDITY
 External Validity – generizability; does a research generalize and apply to others too?
 Internal Validity – whether an experiment treatment makes a difference or not, and whether there is
sufficient evidence to support the claim.
RESEARCH METHOD TO BE USED
1.) Experiment – determine cause-and-effect relationships, and has 2 characteristics:
a) Manipulation of one or more independent variables.
b) Random assignment of subjects to experimental and control conditions.
Independent variable – the researcher intentionally manipulates
Dependent variable – the changes that occur as a result of the manipulation
2) Quasi experiment –are employed when the researcher is interested in independent variables that cannot
be randomly assigned.
3) Archival research – involves using previously collected data or records to answer a research question.
4) Surveys – can be conducted by mail, personal interview, phone, fax, email, etc.
5) Meta-Analysis – uses a statistical approach to combine the results from multiple studies in an effort to
increase power over individual studies, improve estimates of the effect size and/or to resolve uncertainty
when reports disagree.
 Correlation coefficients – are used as the effect size when researchers are interested in the
relationship between 2 variables.
 Difference score – is used when researchers are looking at the difference between 2 groups.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
- 0.5 level of significance is commonly used.
- To determine the strength of a finding, we use the effect size (i.e. from meta-analysis)
- Significance levels tell us the statistics significance of a study, and effect sizes tell us the practical
significance of a study.

CHAPTER 2
JOB ANALYSIS – gathering, analyzing, and structuring information about a job’s components, characteristics,
and requirements. It is the foundation for almost all human resources activities.
 Importance:
o Employee selection
o Training
o Personpower planning – worker mobility within an organization
o Performance appraisal
Job Description – a brief, 2-5 page summary of the tasks and job requirements found in the job analysis.
Job Classification – classify jobs into groups based on similarities in requirements & duties.
Job Evaluation – determines the monetary worth of a job.
o Internal pay equity – comparing jobs within the organization
o External pay equity – comparing job to the external market
Job Design – determines the optimal way in which a job should be performed. (motion studies)
Job Title – an accurate title describes the nature of the job.
Job Context – describe the environment in which the employee works and should mention stress level, work
schedule, physical demands, level of responsibility, temperature, no. of coworkers, degree of danger, etc.
Work performance – should outline the standards of performance. It contains brief description of how an
employee’s performance is evaluated and what work standards are to be expected of the employee.
Job Competencies – KSAO’s an employee must have (1) upon hiring, & (2) can be obtained after hiring.
Job crafting – the informal changes that employees make in their jobs.

Steps in Conducting a Job Analysis:

I. Identify Tasks performed
 Identify the major job dimensions and the tasks performed for each dimension, the tools and
equipment used to perform the tasks, and the conditions under which the tasks are performed.
 This info is gathered by obtaining previous information on the job, interview job incumbents or SME,
observing performance, or actually performing the job itself(job participation).
 A good way to start the actual interview: asking the employee to describe what she does from the
moment she 1st enters the parking lot at work to the moment she arrives back home.
 Ammerman technique – a committee of SMEs meets to brainstorm the major duties involved in a job.
II. Write Task Statements
 Write task statements that will be used in the task inventory(how,why,when) & included in the job
description.
 At the minimum, a properly written task statement must contain an action (what is done) and an
object (to which the action is done).
III. Rate the Task Statements
 Conduct a task analysis – using a group of SMEs to rate each task statement on the frequency and the
importance or criticality of the task being performed.
 Tasks will not be included in the job description if their average frequency rating is 0.5 or below.
 Tasks will not be included in the final task inventory if they have either an average rating of 0.5 or less
on either the frequency (F) or importance (I) scales, or an average combined rating (CR) of less than 2.
IV. Determine the KSAOs
 Knowledge, Skill, Ability, Other characteristics
 are most commonly referred to as competencies
 In the old days, KSAOs were called job specifications (these 3 terms can be used interchangeably)
 Competency modeling – when competencies are tied to an organization’s strategic initiatives and
plans rather than to specific tasks
 Determining KSAOs can be done in 2 ways: (1) logically linking tasks, (2) prepackaged questionnaires
V. Selection Tests to Tap KSAOs

LEADERSHIP THEORIES
Path-goal theory (House) – if leader behavior help subordinates achieve relevant goals
Fiedler’s contingency model – effectiveness is dependent on the interaction between the leader and the
situation
IMPACT Theory (Geier, Downey, & Johnson) – effective only in one of the six organizational climates.
Situational Leadership Theory (Hersey & Blanchard) – leader must adapt to fit both situation & followers.

THEORIES OF SOCIAL LOAFING

Free rider effect – when a group is doing well, an individual realizes his effort is not necessary and does not
work as hard.
Sucker effect – a group member notices that other group members are not working hard.
Social Loafing – individuals in a group exert less individual effort than they would if they were not in a group.
Social Inhibition – The negative effects that occur when a person performs a task in the presence of others.
Social Facilitation – the positive effects that occur when a person performs a task in the presence of others.
Audience Effect – the effect in behavior when one or more people passively watch the behavior of another
person.

Distribution Errors
Raters tend to rate every employee at the upper end
of the scale regardless of the actual performance of
Leniency Error
the employee.

Supervisors rate every employee in the middle of the

Central Tendency Error
scale.
Strictness Error Rates every employee at the low end of the scale.
Occurs when a rater allows either a single attribute
or an overall impression of an individual to affect the
Halo Error ratings that she makes on each relevant job
dimension.

The performance rating one person receives can be

influenced by the performance of a previously
Contrast Error
evaluated person.

A new supervisor gives an employee excellent

ratings(even though performing mediocre
Assimilation
performance) because his/her previous evaluations
were excellent.