Introduction to I/O Psychology

Employees in India work for an average of 48-60 hours a week, depending on the type
of job, industry and international contracts. The workday is a significant portion of
workers’ time and energy. It impacts their lives and their family’s lives in positive and
negative, physical and psychological ways.

Industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology is a branch of psychology that studies

how human behaviour and psychology affect work and how they are affected by work.

Industrial and organizational psychologists work in four main contexts: academia,

government, consulting firms, and business. Most I-O psychologists have a master’s
or doctorate degree. The field of I-O psychology can be divided into three broad
areas: industrial, organizational, and human factors.

Industrial psychology is concerned with describing job requirements and assessing

individuals for their ability to meet those requirements. In addition, once employees
are hired, industrial psychology studies and develops ways to train, evaluate, and
respond to those evaluations. As a consequence of its concern for candidate
characteristics, industrial psychology must also consider issues of legality regarding
discrimination in hiring.

Organizational psychology is a discipline interested in how the relationships among

employees affect those employees and the performance of a business. This includes
studying worker satisfaction, motivation, and commitment. This field also studies
management, leadership, and organizational culture, as well as how an organization’s
structures, management and leadership styles, social norms, and role expectations
affect individual behaviour. As a result of its interest in worker wellbeing and
relationships, organizational psychology also considers the subjects of harassment,
including sexual harassment, and workplace violence.

Human factors psychology is the study of how workers interact with the tools of
work and how to design those tools to optimize workers’ productivity, safety, and
health. These studies can involve interactions as straightforward as the fit of a desk,
chair, and computer to a human having to sit on the chair at the desk using the
computer for several hours each day. They can also include the examination of how
humans interact with complex displays and their ability to interpret them accurately
and quickly. In Europe, this field is referred to as ergonomics.

Industrial psychology focuses on hiring and maintaining employees. Organizational

psychology is interested in employee relationships and organizational culture.

Industrial psychology, as an important branch of applied psychology, makes a

scientific study of the behaviour of the employees engaged in industrial organizations.
Their behaviour is studied with special reference to production and efficiency. IP also
deals with the problems and adjustment pattern of workers in the field and laboratory
situations.

According to Tiffin and McCormick (1971), “Industrial psychology is concerned

with the study of human behaviour in those aspects of life that are related to
production, distribution and use of goods and services of our civilization". In short,
industrial psychology applies various techniques, theories and principles of
psychology to study the multifarious problems of employees working in industries
and organizations.

According to Blum (1949), “Industrial psychology is simply the application or

extension of psychological facts and principles to the problems concerning human
relations in business and industry”.

Though industrial psychology applies the techniques of psychology to the industrial

situation and the problems confronting it, it nevertheless modifies such procedures
and formulates new procedures and techniques to face and solve the conditions found
on the job rather than in the laboratory.

What is Organizational Behavior (OB)?

It is the study of human behaviour in organizational settings, the interface between

human behaviour and the organization, and the organization itself. Organizational
Behavior researchers study the behaviour of individuals primarily in their
organizational roles.
One of the main goals of organizational behaviour is to revitalize organizational
theory and develop a better conceptualization of organizational life. As a multi-
disciplinary field, organizational behaviour has been influenced by developments in a
number of allied disciplines including sociology, psychology, economics, and
engineering as well as by the experience of practitioners.

Industrial and Organizational (I-O) psychology is a subfield of psychology that

studies people, their behaviour (performance of tasks) in a working environment, and
the settings in which people work and function, in order to gain a better understanding
of behaviour and how it can be influenced, changed and enhanced to benefit the
employees and the organizations (APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational
Psychology, 2011).

I-O psychology focuses on three aspects:

1. the person, the worker;

2. the work (tasks) that is (are) being performed; and
3. the context in which the work is performed.

The two fundamental goals of I-O psychology are

(1) to understand the behaviour (performance of tasks) of people in a work

setting; how people can become effective, satisfied, fulfilled, and rewarded; and how
these outcomes can be maintained, and

(2) to study how the organization can be sustained and developed and applying
psychological principles, theory, research, and interventions in order to design and
implement practical solutions to solve organizational challenges.

Scope of I/O Psychology

1. Economic, Social and Psychological Aspect of Industry

2. Study of the Physical Aspect of Work Environment
3. Principles of Human Relationships
4. Study of Aptitudes and Motives
5. Study of Principles of Mental Health
6. Study of Human Relation.

Historical Development of Industrial Psychology

The study of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology originated in the United

States in the early 1900s through the work of psychologists Hugo Münsterberg and
Walter Dill Scott (both of whom were trained by German physiologist and
psychologist Wilhelm Wundt), while its practical application developed largely
through the work of American industrial engineer Frederick W. Taylor. I-O
psychology grew rapidly after World War I and even more so after World War II,

In ww 2 even psychologists were employeed in making weapons.

Some I-O psychologists develop methods for personnel selection and training, while
others analyze managers’ styles and effectiveness or study ways to improve
workplace morale, job satisfaction, and productivity. The field of I-O psychology
contributed to the development of human factors engineering, or ergonomics, which
involves designing equipment (e.g., displays for airplane cockpits and automobile
dashboards, computer keyboards, or home appliances) that can be operated safely and
efficiently.

World war 1- army alpha and army beta tests emerge

Alpha tests-involved verbal tests for english, language etc.
Beta tests- non-verbal tests.

With a staff of 40 psychologists, Yerkes was able to develop two different tests for
intelligence. The first test, the Alpha, was a written test made up of true/false and
multiple-choice questions that assessed things like the ability to follow directions,
arithmetic, and analogies. The Army Alpha test was distributed to determine whether
draftees could read English, but also to evaluate soldiers so that they could be
assigned to tasks or training in alignment with their abilities.

The Army Beta test was developed for those men with limited literacy who were
unable to respond to the written test. The instructions for the test were provided using
pictures and other symbols, and it tested using things like mazes, identification of
patterns, and picture completion.

Psychologists aimed to make the tests fairly comparable. Soldiers were given a letter
grade and those who received the lowest grade were deemed unfit for service. The
men who received a letter grade higher were given simple duties. The men who
received scores in the middle of the distribution performed regular soldier duties.
Those with higher scores were trained as officers.

Hwathorne studies

The Hawthorne Effect refers to the fact that people will modify their behavior simply
because they are being observed. The effect gets its name from one of the most
famous industrial history experiments that took place at Western Electric’s factory in
the Hawthorne suburb of Chicago in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Hawthorne Experiment by Elton Mayo

In 1927, a group of researchers led by Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger of the
Harvard Business School were invited to join in the studies at the Hawthorne Works
of Western Electric Company, Chicago. The experiment lasted up to 1932. The
Hawthorne Experiment brought out that the productivity of the employees is not the
function of only physical conditions of work and money wages paid to
them. Productivity of employees depends heavily upon the satisfaction of the
employees in their work situation. Mayo’s idea was that logical factors were far less
important than emotional factors in determining productivity efficiency. Furthermore,
of all the human factors influencing employee behavior, the most powerful were those
emanating from the worker’s participation in social groups. Thus, Mayo concluded
that work arrangements in addition to meeting the objective requirements of
production must at the same time satisfy the employee’s subjective requirement of
social satisfaction at his work place.

. Illumination Experiment:
This experiment was conducted to establish relationship between output and
illumination. When the intensity of light was increased, the output also increased. The
output showed an upward trend even when the illumination was gradually brought
down to the normal level. Therefore, it was concluded that there is no consistent
relationship between output of workers and illumination in the factory. There must be
some other factor which affected productivity.

2. Relay Assembly Test Room Experiment:

This phase aimed at knowing not only the impact of illumination on production but
also other factors like length of the working day, rest hours, and other physical
conditions. In this experiment, a small homogeneous work-group of six girls was
constituted. These girls were friendly to each other and were asked to work in a very
informal atmosphere under the supervision of a researcher. Productivity and morale
increased considerably during the period of the experiment. Productivity went on
increasing and stabilized at a high level even when all the improvements were taken
away and the pre-test conditions were reintroduced. The researchers concluded that
socio-psychological factors such as feeling of being important, recognition, attention,
participation, cohesive work-group, and non-directive supervision held the key for
higher productivity.

3. Mass Interview Programme:

The objective of this programme was to make a systematic study of the employees
attitudes which would reveal the meaning which their “working situation” has for
them. The researchers interviewed a large number of workers with regard to their
opinions on work, working conditions and supervision. Initially, a direct approach
was used whereby interviews asked questions considered important by managers and
researchers. The researchers observed that the replies of the workmen were guarded.
Therefore, this approach was replaced by an indirect technique, where the interviewer
simply listened to what the workmen had to say. The findings confirmed the
importance of social factors at work in the total work environment.

4. Bank Wiring Test Room Experiment:

This experiment was conducted by Roethlisberger and Dickson with a view to
develop a new method of observation and obtaining more exact information about
social groups within a company and also finding out the causes which restrict output.
The experiment was conducted to study a group of workers under conditions which
were as close as possible to normal. This group comprised of 14 workers. After the
experiment, the production records of this group were compared with their earlier
production records. It was observed that the group evolved its own production norms
for each individual worker, which was made lower than those set by the management.
Because of this, workers would produce only that much, thereby defeating the
incentive system. Those workers who tried to produce more than the group norms
were isolated, harassed or punished by the group. The findings of the study are:-

 Each individual was restricting output.

 The group had its own “unofficial” standards of performance.
 Individual output remained fairly constant over a period of time.

Industrial and organizational psychology had its origins in the early 20th century.
Several influential early psychologists studied issues that today would be categorized
as industrial psychology: James Cattell (1860–1944) at Columbia, Hugo Münsterberg
(1863–1916) at Harvard, Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) at Northwestern, Robert
Yerkes (1876–1956) and Walter Bingham (1880–1952) at Dartmouth, and Lillian
Gilbreth (1878–1972) at Purdue. Cattell, Münsterberg, and Scott had been students of
Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology.

Cattell’s contribution to industrial psychology is largely reflected in his founding of a

psychological consulting company, which is still operating today called the
Psychological Corporation, and in the accomplishments of students at Columbia in the
area of industrial psychology. In 1913, Münsterberg published Psychology and
Industrial Efficiency, which covered topics such as employee selection, employee
training, and effective advertising.

Scott 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. They are the first books to
describe the use of psychology in the business world. By 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 (Katzell & Austin, 1992).

The focus of all this research was in what we now know as industrial psychology; it
was only later in the century that the field of organizational psychology developed as
an experimental science (Katzell & Austin, 1992).

The involvement of the United States in World War I in April 1917 catalyzed the
participation in the military effort of psychologists working in this area. At that time
Yerkes was the president of the 25-year-old American Psychological Association
(APA). The APA is a professional association in the United States for clinical and
research psychologists. Yerkes 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. Scott and Bingham organized a group under the Adjutant General’s
Office (AGO) with the goal to develop selection methods for officers. They created a
catalogue of occupational needs for the Army, essentially a job-description system
and a system of performance ratings and occupational skill tests for officers (Katzell
& Austin, 1992).

After the war, work on personnel selection continued. For example, Millicent Pond,
who received a PhD from Yale University, researched the selection of factory
workers, comparing the results of pre-employment tests with various indicators of job
performance. These studies were published in a series of research articles in
the Journal of Personnel Research in the late 1920s (Vinchur & Koppes, 2014).

From 1929 to 1932 Elton Mayo (1880–1949) and his colleagues began a series of
studies at a plant near Chicago, Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works. This long-term
project took industrial psychology beyond just employee selection and placement to a
study of more complex problems of interpersonal relations, motivation, and
organizational dynamics. These studies mark the origin of organizational psychology.
They began as research into the effects of the physical work environment (e.g., level
of lighting in a factory), but the researchers found that the psychological and social
factors in the factory were of more interest than the physical factors. These studies
also examined how human interaction factors, such as supervisorial style, enhanced or
decreased productivity. What the original researchers found was that any change in a
variable, such as lighting levels, led to an improvement in productivity; this was true
even when the change was negative, such as a return to poor lighting.

In the 1930s, researchers began to study employees’ feelings about their jobs. Kurt
Lewin also conducted research on the effects of various leadership styles, team
structure, and team dynamics (Katzell & Austin, 1992). Lewin is considered the
founder of social psychology and much of his work and that of his students produced
results that had important influences in organizational psychology. Lewin and his
students’ research included an important early study that used children to study the
effect of leadership style on aggression, group dynamics, and satisfaction (Lewin,
Lippitt, & White, 1939). Lewin was also responsible for coining the term group
dynamics, and he was involved in studies of group interactions, cooperation,
competition, and communication that bear on organizational psychology.

Parallel to these studies in industrial and organizational psychology, the field of

human factors psychology was also developing. Frederick Taylor was an engineer
who saw that if one could redesign the workplace there would be an increase in both
outputs for the company and wages for the workers. In 1911 he put forward his theory
in a book titled, The Principles of Scientific Management. His book examines
management styles, personnel selection and training, as well as the work itself, using
time and motion studies. Taylor showed that the workers could be more productive by
taking work rests. This method of rest increased worker productivity from 12.5 to
47.0 tons moved per day with less reported fatigue as well as increased wages for the
workers who were paid by the ton. At the same time, the company’s cost was reduced
from 9.2 cents to 3.9 cents per ton. Despite these increases in productivity, Taylor’s
theory received a great deal of criticism at the time because it was believed that it
would exploit workers and reduce the number of workers needed.

Lillian Gilbreth was another influential I-O psychologist who strove to find ways to
increase productivity. Using time and motion studies, Gilbreth and her husband,
Frank, worked to make workers more efficient by reducing the number of motions
required to perform a task. She not only applied these methods to the industry but also
to the home, office, shops, and other areas. She investigated employee fatigue and
time management stress and found many employees were motivated by money
and job satisfaction. In 1914, Gilbreth wrote the book title, The Psychology of
Management: The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching, and Installing
Methods of Least Waste, and she is known as the mother of modern management.

Taylor and Gilbreth’s work improved productivity, but these innovations also
improved the fit between technology and the human using it. The study of machine-
human fit is known as ergonomics or human factors psychology.

In the years after the war, both industrial psychology and organizational psychology
became areas of significant research effort. Concerns about the fairness of
employment tests arose, and the ethnic and gender biases in various tests were
evaluated with mixed results. In addition, a great deal of research went into
studying job satisfaction and employee motivation (Katzell & Austin, 1992). Today,
I-O psychology is a diverse and deep field of research and practice, as you will learn
about in the rest of this chapter. The Society for Industrial and Organizational
Psychology (SIOP), a division of the APA, lists 8,000 members (SIOP, 2014) and the
Bureau of Labor Statistics—U.S. Department of Labor (2013) has projected this
profession will have the greatest growth of all job classifications in the 20 years
following 2012.