WELCOME TO
PSYCHOLOGY AT WORK!
Dr. Benson, Psychology 2061A
What is Industrial/Organizational
Psychology?
 Helping individuals pursue meaningful and
enriching work
 Assisting organizations in the effective
management of human resources
The scientist-practitioner model
I/O includes both scientific research and
professional practice
Research questions come from actual
challenges and opportunities faced by
organizations
 e.g., How should we design our office?
The scientist-practitioner model
I/O includes both scientific research and
professional practice
Research questions come from actual
challenges and opportunities faced by
organizations
e.g., How can we optimize virtual workspaces?
The scientist-practitioner model
I/O psychologists
Consult with organizations by offering
assessment and strategic recommendations
Internal and external consultants
Study organizations and the people within
them to advance knowledge
Why Industrial and Organizational
Psych?
- Our ‘hunches’ and ‘intuitions’ about organizational issues
are not always correct
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/when-it-comes-to-culture-does-your-company-walk-the-talk/
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/when-it-comesto-culture-does-your-company-walk-the-talk/
Society for Industrial and Organizational
Psychology: Top workplace trends 2023
 10. Integrating work, life, and family
 9. Leadership development and coaching
 8. Psychological safety in the workplace
 7. Revisiting people strategies in times of economic uncertain
 6. Reshaping work to address employee’s mental health
 5. Talent attraction and retention in a candidate-driven market
 4. Ensuring inclusive environments and cultures
 3. Managing the transition into post-pandemic work
 2. Best practices for managing a hybrid workforce
 1. Re-thinking the employee experience of remote workers
***as of Jan. 2023
Course information
Instructor: Dr. Alex Benson
 Office: SSC 8408
 Office hours: Tuesday, 2:00pm-3:00pm
 Contact: abenson3@uwo.ca or 519-661-3679 ext. 85895
Teaching Assistant: Jake Pavicic
 Office hours: By appointment – please e-mail to arrange a time.
 Contact: jpavicic@uwo.ca
Communication
OWL Forums
 If you have a question for either the instructor or
the TA, please post these questions on the general
discussion “Forums”
 Students may respond to others’ queries via the
OWL Forum if they know the answers
 We’ll monitor responses to ensure any information
provided is accurate
Email
 Within 24-48 hours (Monday to Friday at 5pm)
 If a detailed explanation of a concept/material is
required, please see me in-person or after class
General structure of the course
Weekly lecture – we will take a 15-minute
break around 3:45 and reconvene at 4:00pm
Evaluation
Two midterms (SA + MC)
Final exam (MC only)
All course material covered in lecture is
testable
There is no textbook. Some weeks have an
assigned reading.
Virtual iClickers
A free app that can be accessed through
https://owl.uwo.ca/portal navigating to the
course site, and clicking on the iClicker tab on
the left-hand toolbar. Please refer to
https://presswestern.uwo.ca/students_and_au
dience/getting_started.html for additional
information on how to set-up your free
account
No grades attached nor will it be used for
attendance
iClicker questions will cover testable material
and you’ll learn more by participating
“I” vs. “O”
Industrial
Organizational
Performance = Ability Performance = Ability
+ motivation,
Efficiency and
organizational factors
productivity
Human
relations
Job analysis,
recruitment, and
selection
Employee experience
What will you learn today?
Factors that influenced the development of I/O
psychology as a field
How to distinguish between scientific and nonscientific ways of knowing
Basic statistical concepts
Measurement in the scientific process
Early days of I/O psychology
“Taylorism”
 Maximal efficiency from
humans and machine
 Goal: Minimize skill
requirements for job, learning
time, separating planning
from execution
Consequences?
 Short-term increases in
productivity and profit
 Boring work, absenteeism,
dissatisfaction, chronic use
injuries
World War I
Required efficient ways to select applicants
and assign them to jobs
 Implemented standardized testing to measure
cognitive ability for placement of soldiers
 Job analysis
Army Alpha & Army Beta
 Scores translated into grades (e.g., used to
differentiate officers from privates)
Hawthorne studies ~1920’s
 Studied the effect of light on worker productivity—
among many other factors
 When level of illumination increased, productivity went
up…but when level of illumination decreased,
productivity also went up
 Hawthorne effect: Any intervention appeared to have an
effect
 Key revelation?
World War II
 Development of Army General Classification
Test
 Appraise candidates for specialized roles
 Optimizing the design of workplaces
Top ace in Germany = 352 aerial victories
Top ace in United States = 40 aerial victories
 Inform strategic personnel decisions, such as: Should
we send jet fighter aces continually back into combat,
or rotate skilled pilots back to train novice pilots?
History I/O psychology
 Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the U.S. furthered
work on employment practices and test
validation in organizations
 Pandemic, tech advances, and the changing
nature of work
 Challenges of remote/virtual working
 Stress
 AI in the workplace (e.g., Robot coworkers,
augmenting human capabilities)
RESEARCH METHODS
IN I/O PSYCHOLOGY
How do we come to know what we think
we know?
 What constitutes a quality handshake, and does it matter
when interviewing for a position?
How do we come to know what we think
we know?
 How effective are interviewers in selecting “better
performing” employees? Do some interviewers have a
talent for identifying talent?
 Are personality tests a valid selection procedure?
 What is the best way to run a virtual team meeting?
Non-scientific methods of inquiry
Method of Authority
 Relying on expert sources
The Rational Method
 Power of reasoning
 Relying on skepticism, searching for “self-evident
truths”
Intuition
 Based on fuzzy unstated assumptions and a
deductive process
 No means to verify or challenge intuition
Scientific method
Concerned with reality – objects and events
exist independently from the observer
Science accepts causality – human behaviour
is based on a set of orderly relations that can
be predicted and explained. A leads to B, and
so on.
 Four stages
 Cyclical in nature
 Refined and corrected over time
Scientific method
1. Observing a phenomenon
 Identify phenomenon of interest
 “scouting” an event, making preliminary
observations
2. Deducing a hypothesis
 Formulating tentative explanations about a
phenomenon
Scientific method
3. Observing, testing and experimenting
 Testing proposed relations
 Correlational study
 Experimental study (random assignment to
condition)
 Quasi-experimental study (no random
assignment to condition)
Scientific method
4. Refining and retesting explanations
 Attempt to disprove hypothesis
Key statistical concepts
 Correlation coefficient: r
 Indicates size and direction of the linear relationship
between two variables
r = .22
Key statistical concepts
Validity coefficient
 The extent to which an instrument/variable is
related to a well-accepted indicator of another
concept
 Typically, a correlation coefficient
Effect size
 Magnitude of the association (or difference)
between two variables (or groups)
 e.g., Cohen’s d = Standard deviation units between
two means
Key statistical concepts
Meta-analysis: An “analysis of analyses” (Glass, 1976)
 Combines results of different studies
 Provides a weighted average of the effect estimates
from the different studies
 Goal to improve the precision of estimates of an
association and to assess whether an effect is similar
in similar situations
The nature of measurement
Methods of Measurement
 Self-report
 Reports about others
 Behavioural observation
 Unobtrusive measures (e.g., wearables)
Observed vs. latent variables
VS
Observed vs. latent variables
 Observed variables directly measure
‘something’
 Speed at which something is travelling
 Number of cars sold at a dealership
 Latent variables represent theoretical
constructs
 E.g., Happiness, self-efficacy, personality variables,
mental toughness, job satisfaction,
intelligence/cognitive ability
 Typically assessed via a questionnaire
Latent variables
Each item (or question) that assesses a
theoretical construct is an indicator of that
construct
 Typically, multiple indicators are used to gather a
reliable index or score for a latent variable
e.g., A professor wants to assess course
knowledge and devises a multiple choice test
to do so.
 What is the latent construct being assessed?
 What are the indicators of that latent construct?
Selecting ways to measure a variable
Selecting variables to study
 Existing theory
 Availability of techniques
 Availability of equipment
 Precision required
Operationalizing a variable: Defining an abstract
construct in terms of procedures and measures
 How might we define job performance of a car
salesperson?
Validity of measures
Construct validity
 How well a measure actually measures what it
claims to measure
 Example?
Content validity
 How well a measure adequately covers all
features of an intended variable
 Example?
Validity of measures
Face validity
 How well a measurement tool appears to actually
measure what it was designed to
Criterion-related validity
 How well scores on a measure can be used to infer
a value on a criterion measure.
 Concurrent validity: Demonstrated with two tests at the same
time
 Predictive validity: Comparing scores on your designed measure
to scores later in the future
Concurrent vs. predictive validity
 A test designed to assess cognitive ability is given to
current employees. At the same time, their job
performance is evaluated. Cognitive ability is
positively correlated with job performance.
 A test designed to assess cognitive ability is given to
prospective job applicants. After the job selection
process, it is shown that people who scored higher on
cognitive ability, also tended to subsequently perform
better in the job for which they were hired.
Reliability
 Reliability: Degree to which observed scores are
free from random measurement error
 Reliability coefficient/Internal consistency
 Ratio of true score variance to observed score variance
Reliability vs. Validity
 Concentric circles represent the ideal construct or actual
behavior you are trying to measure, with the innermost
circles most accurately representing the construct
 The dots represent attempts to measure the variable
Reliability vs. Validity
Reliability vs. Validity
Reliability vs. Validity
Reliability vs. Validity
Factors affecting validity coefficients
Range restriction
 Does the sample provide a range of scores on the
variable of interest
e.g., undergraduate grades among medical school
students
Measurement error
 High measurement error/low reliability reduces the
ability to detect a relation between two variables
Bias
 A systematic error OR inferences made from
measurements that are related to identifiable group
membership characteristics
Some notes about research in
organizational settings
 Heavy reliance on correlation studies
 Assessing ‘noisy’ social-psychological processes
 Participant burden
 Getting buy-in from the organization and
employees to actually conduct the research
required
 Researchers are often tasked with selling the relevance
and implications of the study (i.e., what is in it for them?)
Guiding questions for next week’s reading
 What is procedural justice and why is it
important in selection processes?
 How can we enhance perceptions of fairness
when hiring candidates?
What are the most preferred and least
preferred job selection methods from the
perspective of the candidate?
What is the current evidence for “digital
footprints”