chapter 1

• Industrial/Organizational Psychology - A branch of psychology that applies the principles of psychology to the workplace
• Industrial Approach - focus on determining the competencies needed to perform a job, staffing the organization with employees who have those competencies, increasing competencies through training
• Organizational Approach (O): creates an organizational structure and culture that will motivate employees to perform well, information to do their jobs, provide working conditions that are safe, enjoyable and satisfying work/life environment.
• Personnel Psychology ─ study on the selection and evaluation of employees
• Organizational Psychology ─ study that investigates the behavior of employees within the context of an organization
• Human Factors/Ergonomics ─ concentrate on workplace design, human-machine interaction, ergonomics, and physical fatigue and stress
• Walter Dill Scott - on wrote The Theory of Advertising (psychology was first applied to business)
• Hugo Munsterberg wrote Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (first published in English, 1913)
• “Economic Psychology,” “Business Psychology,” & “Employment Psychology” were more common in the field
• Army Alpha – intelligence test used for soldiers who can read
• Army Beta – intelligence test used for soldiers who cannot read
• John Watson (pioneer in behaviorism) – developed perceptual and motor tests for potential pilots
• Henry Gantt – increase in the efficiency with which cargo ships were built, repaired and loaded
• Frank Gilbreth & Lillian Moller Gilbreth – among the first scientist to improve productivity and reduce fatigue by studying the motions used by the workers.
• 1930 – IO Psychology expanded its scope
• Hawthorne Studies – series of studies conducted at the Western Electric Plant in Hawthorne, Illinois, that have come to represent any change in behavior when people react to a change in environmen
• Hawthorne Effect – when employees change their behavior due solely to the fact that they are receiving attention or are being observed
• 1960 – passage of several major pieces of civil rights legislation, use of sensitivity training and T-groups (laboratory training groups) for managers
• 1970 – employee satisfaction and motivation, use of behaviormodification techniques in organizations
• Graduate Record Exam (GRE) – a standardized admission test required by most psychology graduate schools; undergraduate point average (GPA) of at least 3.0 and score of 300
• Dissertation – a formal research paper required of most doctoral students in order to graduate (broader in scope, longer and requires more original and independent effort than thesis).
• hypothesis – educated prediction about the answer to a research problem
• theory – a systematic set of assumptions regarding the cause and nature of behavior.
• Journals – written collection of articles describing the methods and results of new research; best source of unbiased and accurate information about a topic.
• Trade Magazines – collection of articles for those “in the biz” about related professional topics, seldom directly reporting the methods and results of new research
• Magazines – unscientific collection of articles about a wide range of topics; information in magazines are often wrong
• External Validity/Generalizability – extent to which the research results can be expected to hold true outside the specific setting in which they were obtained.
• Field Research – out in the “field,” has a problem opposite to that of laboratory research, gains external validity, loses control of extraneous variables (internal validity), provides researchers with an ethical dilemma.
• Informed Consent – formal process by which subjects give permission to be included in a study.
• Institutional Review Boards – a committee designated to ensure the ethical treatment of research subjects
• Experiments – a type of research study in which the independent variable is manipulated by the experimenter.
• cause-and-effect relationships – the result of a well-controlled experiment about which the researcher can confidently state that the independent variable caused the change in the dependent variable.
• manipulation - (alteration of a variable by an experimenter in expectation that it will result in a change in the dependent variable) of one or more independent variable
• Quasi-Experiments – method wherein the experimenter either does not manipulate the independent variable or in which subjects are not randomly assigned to conditions.
• Archival Research – research that involves the use of previously collected data or records to answer a research question
• Surveys – method in research that ask people their opinion on some topics.
• Meta-Analysis – a statistical method of reaching conclusions based on previous research.
• Effect Size – statistic that indicates the amount of change caused by an experimental manipulation.
• Mean Effect Size – statistic that is the average of the effect sizes for all studies included in the analysis.
• Correlation Coefficients (r) – used as the effect size when researchers are interested in the relationship between two variables