Industrial-organizational Psychology Notes

Industrial-organizational psychology - A branch of psychology that studies how human behavior and psychology affect work and how they are affected by work - Industrial-Organizational psychologists work in: - Academia - Government - Consulting firms - Business Areas of IO psych - Industrial Psychology - Studies job characteristics, applicant characteristics, and how to match them; studies employee training and performance appraisal - Focuses on hiring and maintaining employees - Considers issues of legality regarding discrimination in hiring - Organizational Psychology - Studies on interactions between people working in organizations and the effects of those interactions on productivity - Interested in worker satisfaction, motivation, commitment, management and leadership styles, social norms, and role expectations - Considers harassment and workplace violence - Human factors psychology - Studies on how workers interact with the tools of work and how to design those tools to optimize workers’ productivity, safety, and health - Known as Ergonomics in Europe - Tools of work can include interaction with a machine, workstation, information displays, and the local environment (e.g., lighting) Selecting employees - Job advertising - Job analysis - accurately describing the task/job - O*Net - database previously complies with job analyses for different jobs and occupation - Candidate analysis and testing - Can involve testing, interviews, work samples, or exercises Interviews - Interviews can be influenced by social factors and body languages such as the degree of similarity of the applicant to the interviewer and nonverbal behaviors - The research found that lack of eye contact and smiling lead to lower applicant ratings - Unstructured interview: - Different questions for different candidates - Questions are usually unspecified beforehand - Structured interview: - Same questions for every candidate - Questions are prepared in advance - Standardized rating system for each response - More effective at predicting subsequent job performance of the job candidate Training - Orientation: - Training usually begins with an orientation period during which a new employee learns about company policies, practices, and culture - Educates the new employee about the organizational culture, the values, visions, hierarchies, norms, and ways the company’s employees interact - Mentoring: - Experienced employee guides the work of a new employee - Mentors may be formally assigned or developed informally Evaluating employees - Industrial-organizational psychologists are often involved in designing performanceappraisal systems for organizations - Aim to make evaluations as fair and positive as possible and decrease subjectivity - Performance appraisals – evaluation of an employee’s success or lack of success at performing the duties of the job - Often used to motivate employees to improve performance and expand areas of competence Bias and protection in hiring - Selecting candidates based on group membership, when it does not directly affect potential job performance, is discriminatory - Many laws exist to prevent hiring based on various group-membership criteria - Pregnancy, religion, and age are some of the criteria on which hiring decisions cannot legally be made - Did you know it is illegal for a potential employer to ask your age in an interview? The US Equal Employment Opportunity - Equal Pay Act – requires equal pay for men and women in the same workplace who are performing equal work - Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) – makes it illegal to treat individuals unfavorably because of their race or the color of their skin - Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978) – prohibits job discrimination of a woman because she is pregnant as long as she can perform the work required - Americans with Disabilities Act - Employers cannot discriminate against any individual based on a disability - Disability – a physical or mental impairment that limits one or more major life activities such as hearing, walking, and breathing - Has been expanded to include individuals with alcoholism, former drug use, obesity, or psychiatric disabilities - Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ) - Requirement of certain occupations for which denying individual employment would otherwise violate the law, such as requirements concerning religion or sex - In some cases, religion, national origin, age, and sex are bona fide occupational qualifications Job satisfaction - Factors Involved in Job Satisfaction: - Autonomy – Individual responsibility, control over decisions Work Content – Variety, challenge, role clarity (Most strongly predictive of overall job satisfaction) Communication – Feedback Financial rewards – Salary and benefits (Weak correlation with job satisfaction) Growth and development – Personal growth, training, education Promotion – Career advancement opportunity Coworkers – Professional relations or adequacy Supervision and feedback – Support, recognition, fairness Workload – Time pressure, tedium Work demands – Extra work requirements, insecurity of position Job stress - Caused by specific stressors in an occupation - This leads to poor health, job performance, and family life - Stressors include - Having to fill multiple roles - Workplace role ambiguity - Lack of career progress - Lack of job security - Lack of control over work outcomes - Isolation - Work overload - Discrimination - Harassment - Bullying Sexual harassment - Most organizations have developed sexual harassment policies that define harassment and procedures to prevent and address it when it occurs - Sexual harassment – sexually-based behavior that is knowingly unwanted and has an adverse effect on a person’s employment status, interferes with a person’s job performance or creates a hostile or intimidating work environment - Types of sexual harassment: - Quid pro quo – you give something to get something - Organizational rewards are offered in exchange for sexual favors - The threat of withholding a reward if a sexual request is refused - Hostile environment sexual harassment – employee experiences conditions in the workplace considered hostile/intimidating (e.g., environment allowing offensive language or sexually explicit images) Violence in the workplace - Workplace violence - violence or the threat of violence against workers; can occur inside or outside the workplace - Includes physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other disruptive behavior - ranges from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and homicide - Warning signs – intimidating behavior, threats, sabotaging equipment, or radical changes in a coworker’s behavior Feelings of being treated unfairly, unjustly, or disrespectfully are significant triggers - Procedural justice – fairness of the processes by which outcomes are determined in conflicts with or among employees Human factors psychology - Studies of the integration (physical, cognitive, or both) of the human-machine interface in the workplace - Concerned with researching and designing machines that fit human requirements - Involved in the development of regulations and principles of test design – often related to safety - Areas of Study - Attention – includes vigilance and monitoring, recognizing signals in noise, mental resources, and divided attention - How is attention maintained? - Cognitive engineering – includes human software interactions in complex automated systems, especially decision-making processes of workers as they are supported by the software system - How do workers use and obtain information provided by software? - Task analysis – breaking down the elements of a task - How can a task be performed more efficiently? - Cognitive task analysis – breaking down the elements of a cognitive task - How are decisions made? -