Introduction to Industrial Psychology

Work had at least three basic meanings prior to the Industrial Revolution:
  1. Work was viewed as a necessary evil, and hard, painful, and burdensome exercise.
  2. Work as an instrumental activity, as a means for achieving ends.
  3. Work as an intrinsically good activity because it represents the creative act of human beings.
The Industrial Revolution stripped human work once and for all of its religious connotations.

The field was also concerned with improving the quality of merit ratings, reducing accidents, solving unusual problems, increasing inspection accuracy, improving training methods, and measuring and improving employee morale.

Two part definition of industrial psychology:
  1. The study of the behavior, thoughts, and feelings of people as they adjust to themselves, object, and surroundings encounter in the workplace.
  2. The use of that information to maximize the economic and psychic well-being of all employees.
Hugo Münsterberg- "first" personnel selection.
Walter Dill Scott- advertising.

Subspecialities:
  1. Personnel psychology.
  2. Organizational behavior studies the impact or groups and other social influence on role-related behaviors, on personal feelings of motivation and commitment, and on communication within the organizational setting.
  3. Organizational development concerns planned changes within organizations that can involve people, work procedures, job design and technology, and the structure of organizational relationships. 
  4. Industrial relations concern the interactions between and among employees and employers, and often involves organized labor unions.
  5. Vocational and career counseling examines the nature of rewarding and satisfying career paths in the context of individuals' different patterns of interests and abilities.
  6. Engineering psychology generally focuses on the design of tools, equipment, and work environment with an eye toward maximizing the effectiveness of women and men as they operate in human-machine systems.
certification- regulating a use of a title.
licensing- regulating what one can't and can do.

Hawthorne effect- some groups or some individuals make a change in the environment will sometimes increase productivity because they think they are being paid attention to.

Essential characteristics of the scientific approach:
  1. Self-correcting.
  2. Empirical.
  3. Open to public inspection.
  4. Objective and statistical.
  5. Controlled and systematic.
  6. Generates theories.
  7. Test hypothesises.
  8. Aims to explain, understand, predict, and change.
Boehm contended that the fields progress has been limited in four ways:
  1. The scientific community has ignored a lot of "real-world" research because it deemed the method, flawed.
  2. Organizations have endured a great deal of academic (traditional) research because it fails to fit the practioner's reality and because it's impractical.
  3. Organization research has been limited to those areas and problems that can conform to the assumptions and requirements of the traditional scientific model, whereas crucial topics such as the relationship between organizational staffing procedure and employees' productivity and satisfaction have been avoided because such research is scientifically "messy."
  4. Plus features of conducting real-world research in organizational settings have gone unrecognized.
4 different kinds of measurement scales:
  1. Simply to name or identify (nominal scale).
  2. Rank or order a set of people, events, or things along some continuum or dimension. (ordinal scale) (not equal distance)
  3. Equal distance or intervals (interval scale).
  4. Intervals between successive numerals reflect equal difference in whatever is being measured, and when the number zero reflects a complete absence of whatever attribute is being measured. (ratio scale) (measures quantity)
independent variable- a variable that is manipulated.
dependent variable- a variable that changes when the independent variable changes (the variable you're interested in).
containment variable- a variable that can influence the dependent variable other than the independent variable.

Types of research:
Specific things that can be accomplished in the lab:
  1. We can ask whether something can happen.
  2. Can specify something that ought to happen.
  3. Can test the power of a phenomenon by demonstrating that it happens even under unnatural conditions that might be expected to preclude it.
Specific techniques:
  1. A lab experiment.
  2. A field experiment- confronts the research with formidable problems as he/she tries to exercise the control necessary for making unusual inference about the results of the experiment.
  3. A field study- takes place in the regular work environment with little or no control over the variables of interest.
  4. A survey- an interview.
  5. A simulation study- creating an artificial work environment that is as similiar to the actual work environment. 
Statistical analysis- help interprests the results of research.
  1. bar graph.
  2. indices of dispersion or variability- the extent to which the scores in a distribution are spread out around that middle or central score.
  3. indices of central tendency.
    1. mean
    2. mode
    3. median
    4. outliers- unusual aberrant, or atypical scores that're markedly higher/larger or lower/smaller than the main body.
  4. indices of dispersion.
    1. interquartile range- the difference or numerical "distance" between the score that separates the top 1/4 of a frequency distribution from the bottom 3/4 and the score that separates the bottom 1/4 of that distribution from the top 3/4s.
    2. range- the distance between the two extremes.
    3. percentage.
    4. variance- equal to the average squared difference between each of the scores in a distance and the mean of those scores.
    5. standard deviation- square root of the variance.
    6. negatively skewed- a lot of high scores.
    7. positively skewed- a lot of low scores.
  5. chi-square test- tells the researchers whether obtained frequencies of observations could reasonably have been obtained due to chance.
  6. t-test- a procedure for determining whether two mean scores are "really" different from each other, or whether a given mean is "really" different from zero or some other number, when the sample size is relatively small, usually less than 30.
  7. analysis of variance- a procedure for comparing the mean values of a dependent variable for two or more groups of individuals, when each group has been exposed to a difference level of one or more independent variable.
  8. F-test- reveals that "between-level" variance exceeds, the "within-level" variance by a predetermined amount, we conclude that the independent variable did indeed have an effect on the dependent variable.
  9. statistical significance- research that is sufficiently unique or distinctive that it is unrealistic to attribute it to chance or random errors or fluctuations in the data-gathering procedure.
    1. A researcher proves or disproves a hypothesis instead, data are collected and, through inferentive stats, the researcher makes a probabilty statement about the likelihood that the hypothesis is true or false.
    2. The stats signficance of a finding must be distinguished from its practical significance, or the extent to which a given result can make any meaninful difference in people's daily activities. 
  10. correlation coefficient.
Current methodologies concerns:
  1. Meta-analytic studies have dealt with leadership, job classfication, and personnel selection.
  2. Cross-cultural research- psychological research and practice transcend national, ethnic, and cultural boundaries. A person's surroundings can have important effects on his/her behavior.
Ethical considerations:
  1. Responsibility. Psychologists are expected to maintain the highest professional standards, to take responsibility for the consequences of their accounts and to ensure that their services are used appropriately.
  2. Competence.
  3. Moral and legal standards.
  4. Public statements - standards of advertising.
  5. Confidentiality.
  6. Welfare of the consumer.
  7. Professional relationships.
  8. Assessment techniques.
  9. Research with human participants.
  10. Care and use of animals.
Assurances that industrial psychologists are not antiunion:
  1. Psychological interventions aren't intended as anti-union activities.
  2. Workers will be fully informed as to the nature of interventions and their implications.
  3. Resulting economic benefits will be shared on at least an equal basis with the workers.
  4. Any given worker can opt out of an "experiment" or research procedure without prejudice. 
Challenges in industrial psychology research:
  1. "Demand" or "uncooperative" behavior - people acting in the way they think that researcher  would like them to act or people deliberately messing up an experiment.
  2. Which variables to study.
  3. "Change" studies - bringing about change in an organization.
The ultimate criterion- the complete final goal of a particular type of selection or training.
  1. Criterion revelance- the degree to which an actual criterion captures portions of the ultimate criterion. The intersection between actual and ultimate criterion.
  2. Criterion dificiency- the ultimate criterion minus the actual criterion.
  3. Criterion contaimation- the actual criterion minus the ultimate ultimate criterion. 
  4. Composite criteria- formed by simply adding all the multiple criteria together.
  5. Proximal criteria- nearby or close in time, order, or space; next to.
  6. Dynamic criteria.
    1. Change over time in the average level of group performance.
    2. Change in validity coefficients that describe relationship between specific selection tests and subsequent criterion measures.
    3. Changes in the relationship among multiple criteria over time.
  7. Hard criteria- not a product of human judgement.
  8. Soft criteria- a product of human judgement.
Types of analysis:
  1. Job analysis - refers to one or more procedures designed to collect information about jobs. Job analysis procedures designed to access these intended outcomes or results, as well as the conditions under which of those results are obtained, are known as job on it approaches.
  2. Job-analysis methods.
    1. Questionnaires.
    2. Checklists.
    3. Individual interviews.
    4. Group interviews.
    5. Diaries.
    6. Technical conferences.
    7. Critical incidents.
    8. Observation interviews.
    9. Work participation.
  3. Specific job-analysis techniques.
    1. Functional job analysis- approach that the US Employement Service adopted. Examines the purpose and goals of the work.
      1. Two types of information are derived.
        • What gets done.
        • How the worker does it.
      2. Functional job analysis analyzes every job in terms of the extent to which it requires workers to deal with data, people, and things.
        • Data- sythesizing, coordinating, comparing.
        • People- mentoring, supervising, taking instructions, helping.
        • Things- setting up, handling.
      3. reliable of criterion- consistent over time.
      4. validity of criterion- measuring what we indend to measure (accuracy).
      5. practical/acceptable- can it be used or is it acceptable.
      6. dynamic criteria- criteria that changes over time.
    2. Positional analysis questionaire.
      1. Information input.
      2. Cognitive processing.
      3. Work output.
    3. Critical incidents- specific examples of work episodes.
  4. Threshold trait analysis- a procedure taht determines whether or not a trait is relevant (to a given job) and, if relevant, the level of the trait required for acceptable job performance.
  5. Worker-oriented procedure- describes the actual behavior required of the job incumbent in order to accomplish the inteded end result.
Job evaluation:
  1. Comparable worth- equal contribution equal pay.
  2. Performance appraisal.
    1. Purposes.
      1. Employee feedback.
      2. For employed personnel related issues.
      3. Validity of personnel selection.
    2. Types of relevant info.
      1. "Objective" Data - productivity data; the things that workers produce or supply that can be counted. Many jobs don't lend themselves very well with objective data.
      2. Personal Data - absenteeism, tardiness, number of accidents at work, etcetera. (from the personnel file)
      3. Judgement Data - someone's (usually a manager or boss) judgement on another's performance (usually an employee.)
  3. Judgmental performance information.
    1. Employee comparisons.
      1. Rank ordering.
      2. Paired comparison.
      3. Forced distribution.
    2. Ratings.
      1. Who- peers, the public, the subordinates.
      2. When- how long the interval.
      3. What- scale formats.
      4. Graphic- forced-choice.
      5. Checklist- marking the "good" and "bad" performance on a sheet.
      6. BARS/BES- Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale/Behavioral Expectation Scale.
      7. MSS- Mixed Standard Scale.
      8. BOS- Behavior Observation Scale.
      9. Rating quality measure.
        • Halo - a situation where a single impression of an employee affects the measure causing the measurement not to have any ups and downs.
        • Reliability - consistency over time.
        • Accuracy.
      10. Casual attributes and ratings.
        • Why the person got the rating.
        • Can the person handles the promotion if he or she got a high rating.
        • The biases of the rater.
Personnel selection:
  1. Reliability- "true scores" variance / "total score" variance. total score = true score + error score.
  2. Estimation.
    1. test-retest.
    2. equivalent forms- measures on two similiar forms (consistancy over measuring instrument).
    3. internal consistency- one test, one occasion.
      1. split-half correlation.
      2. coefficient alpha- a statistic that represents the average split-half correlation the split it up in every possible way.
Important considerations:
  1. Estimation procedure - reliability of tests.
    1. Coefficient Alpha - most optimistic.
    2. Test - retest.
    3. Equivalent forms - most pessimistic.
  2. Number of items - the larger number of items the more reliability the test will be.
  3. Appropriate difficulty - whether there are too many easy or hard questions.
  4. Order of "easy" or "difficult" items - starting with easy questions.
  5. Diversity of questions - the more diverse the islands the more reliable the test will be.
  6. Item format.
Validity approaches:
  1. Content-oriented- does it measure all I want to measure, and none I don't want to measure.
  2. Face validity- whether or not it looks like its valid. When a measurer starts out face validity is sometimes all he has.
  3. Criterion-oriented (imperical oriented)- uses a coerelation coefficent. How they scored on the test, and how they do on the job.
Selection "tests:"
  1. Paper-and-pencil.
    1. Intelligence.
    2. Motivation.
    3. Personality.
  2. Biodata - demographic information interviews.
  3. Situation specificity - just because an intelligent test is valid in one organization it it might not be valid in another organization.
  4. Performance is a function of the ability and motivation.
  5. Interviews - interviews aren't a passive participation.
  6. Work samples.
  7. Situational exercises.
  8. Recommendations.
  9. Interviews.
    1. The interviewer puts more weight on the negatives of the interview.
    2. Stuff that comes out in the beginning and the end are easier to remember.
    3. Interviewers talk more than the interviewee, because of the silence.
    4. Less experienced interviewers make up their minds in 3 or 4 minutes about the interviewee.
    5. Stress interviews.
Project tests of Assessment centers- decides who would be a good manager.
  1. Miner Completion Sentence Test tests six key attitudes.
    1. A favorable attitude.
    2. A desire to compete.
    3. Assertive motivation.
    4. A desire to exercise power.
    5. A desire to perform routine managerial functions.
    6. A desire to stand out.
  2. Thematic Apperception Test.
  3. Advanced Managerial Potential Assessment.
    1. 1 - low probability of success.
    2. 4 - high probability of success.
Personnel decision making:
  1. Expentancy charts- organizational chart.
  2. Multiple regression- an equation that shows how to use certain test scores to predict performance.
    3. y = h1x1 + h2x2 + h3y3   where b = weights, x = scores on different tests, and y = predictive job performance score.
  3. Multiple cutoff.
  4. "Clinical" judgements- a feeling about the person.
  5. Multiple hurdle- the application must be able to get over each of the cutoffs one by one to be potential employees.
  6. Moderator variables- looking at a specific subgroup of a group of individuals.
  7. Suppressor variables- partioning out irrevelence variance.
  8. Synthetic/job component validity. 
Personnel training:
  1. Plans to increase job knowledge and skills.
    1. Learn.
    2. Remember what they learn.
    3. Transfer it back to the workplace.
  2. Needs assessment.
    1. Goals of the organization.
    2. The resources.
    3. The constraints.
  3. Evaluating a training program.
    1. Did a change occur? If no, the program isn't working very well.
    2. Was training responsible for the change?
    3. Will it work again?
  4. Threats (containments).
    1. "History" - unemployment rate and other changes during time.
    2. "Maturation."
    3. Pretesting.
    4. Instrumentation changes.
    5. Regression toward the mean.
  5. Experimental immortality - people dropping out of the training program, in the high or low end of the bell curve.
  6. If you know you are in a control group.
    1. The supervisor gives information to the control group, or compensates for them.
    2. Compensatory rivalry / demoralization.
  7. Threats of external validity.
    1. Hawthorne effect - because it's novel, the training program get special attention.
    2. Pygmalion effect - people sometimes live up to the expectations of their trainer.
  8. Training criteria.
    1. Reaction criteria.
    2. Learning criteria.
    3. Behavioral criteria.
    4. Organizational results criteria.
  9. Evaluating designs.
    1. Pre-experimental: T1 = pretest, T2 = post test, x = training program, R = random selection.  x -> T2   T1 -> x -> T2 ---> = time
    2. Experimental: c = control group.  The first two rows are the control group and experimental group.
      3. Rc  -> T1 -> x -> T2
      Rc  -> T1 ------> T2
      Rc2 -------> x -> T2
      Rc3 ------------> T2
    3. Quasi-experimental.
      1. Non-equivalent control group.
        2. T1 -> x -> T2
        T1 ------> T2
      2. Time series: T1 -> T2 -> T3 -> x -> T4 -> T5 -> T6
  10. Learning principles.
    1. Practice (Massed - do it all at once versus distributed- space it out).
    2. Whole- simple tasks versus part learning - complex tasks.
    3. Motivation / reinforcement.
    4. Feedback - precise feedback is better than no feedback or qualitative feedback in different tasks.
    5. Transfer.
      1. Identical elements - you were trained in the same circumstances that you would work in.
      2. Principles- you're trained in different circumstances from which you working, but the principles of both are the same.
  11. Training techniques.
    1. Lectures.
    2. Videos.
    3. Programmed instruction - self-paced. Requires preparation on the part of the trailer.
    4. Computer-assisted instruction.
    5. Conferences and case studies.
    6. Sensitivity training.
    7. Simulations.
    8. Behavioral role modeling.
    9. On-the-job training
      1. Coaching- one person trains another. Might not know what to tell people.
      2. Job rotation - rotating people around to different number of jobs.
      3. Performance appraisal.
Motivation in the workplace:
  1. "Balance" theories (Adams' Equity Theory).
    1. Input/Output = Input/Output.  (self = other ie employer)
    2. Input- what you put in the organization.
    3. Output- what you get out of the organization.
    4. If these are equal, then the "self" person is balanced. If they aren't equal, then the "self" person will adjust the "Input" or "Output" of his ratio until the two ratios are equal.
  2. VIE theories.
    1. Valence- the anticipated effective response that is associated with situation.
    2. Instrumentatility- the percieved relation between two outcomes.
    3. Expectancy- the percieved relation between an outcome and a behavior responsible for the outcome.
  3. Theory X and Theory Y.
  4. A cognitive model.
    1. Value of rewards (VOR) <- Needs + Satisfaction
    2. Effort <- VOR + Perceived Effort Reward Probability
    3. Performance <- Effort + Skills and Abilities + Role Perception
    4. Performance effects Extrinsic Rewards, Perceived Equitable Rewards and Intrinsic Rewards.
    5. The three rewards effect Satisfaction.
Instruction giving:
  1. Reasons why instructions don't get followed:
    1. The tone of voice used by the instruction-giver.
    2. The instructions-taker resent the giver.
    3. Distractions during the giving of instruction.
  2. Types of instruction-givers:
    1. Cover your ass. Giving instructions to make sure taht if anything goes wrong they will have someone otehr than themselves to blame it on.
    2. I'm an important person, I don't have time to explain. They regard explanations as a waste of precious time and they brag that they won't stoop to "hand-holding" their employees.
    3. Crisis managers. They thrive on exorbinant rush charges, overnight delivery services, last-minute changes of plans, and hearing someone else say, "The sky is falling."
    4. Taskus interruptus. These bosses assign a task and just when their employee has become immersed in it, interrupts the person with a new request.
    5. Over-the-shoulder supervisor. These people fear that they're the only ones capable of doing anything and that the only way you are going to be able to carry out their orders is if they supervise you at every step of the way.
    6. Why don't you let me do that for you. They do the job for you thinking that you can't do it exactly like them.
    7. Management by guilt.
    8. Free associators. They throw out vague requests that sometimes seem contradictory or confusing.
    9. The Cro-Magnon manager.
    10. Do as I mean, not as I say.
    11. Managers that think their employees think or at least on the same wavelength as they are.
    12. The carrot-on-the-stick wavers.
    13. Ping-pongers. These managers speak in mutual exclusive sentences.
  3. Types of instruction-takers:
    1. Just give me the details.
    2. The pacifist. These employees don't say a word, and not at all the right moments when given instructions.
    3. Ass-kissers.
    4. The terminally obtuse. Employees who act dumb just to get out of doing a task.
    5. I'm just all thumbs.
    6. Wild goose-chasers.
    7. Style meisters- employees obsessed with style.
    8. Don't boss me around.
    9. Too smart for instructions.
    10. The paper warrior. Problems can be solved more information.
    11. The overkiller. Problems can be solved with more technology, more money, more manpower.
    12. Guaranteed to miss the forest for the trees. Gets so caught up in the details of instructions that they miss the intent altogether.
    13. Sure, oh shit. Can't say No to instructions or tasks that they know they can't handle. 
  4. Compatible bosses and employees.
    5. Boss Type         Employee Type
           2                          1
           6                          5
           5                          3
5 components that make up a person's work style:
  1. Behavioral factors.
  2. Work methodology - how does a person carry out a task via psychomotor and physiological behavior.
  3. Interpersonal relations.
  4. Temporal considerations- at what time of day does a person perform most efficiently.
  5. Work environment.
Employer and employee communication:
  1. 4 types of barriers that inhibit communication between management and employees:
    1. Individual differences in perception.
    2. Relationships between employers and employees.
    3. Hierarchy and group size.
    4. The clarity and effectiveness of information.
  2. 3 conditions must be met before communications can take successfully.
    1. Subordinates must know what their seniors need to hear.
    2. Subordinates must be given the chance to provide this information.
    3. Subordinates must work for people who can accept it in a way that will not discourage disclosure.
Offensive tactics that employers use:
  1. I'm the boss, that's why.
  2. If at first you don't succeed, scream louder.
  3. Always test their loyalty.