Applied Psych quiz 1 Flashcards
What is applied psychology?
The use of psychological principles and theories to overcome problems in the real world
What is organisational psychology?
Industrial/organisational (I/O) psychology: the study of behaviour in work settings and the application of psychology principles to change work behaviour
World war 1 and the testing movement
- US army commissioned psychologists to devise two intelligence tests for the placement of army recruits: alpha army test (people who could read and write) and beta army test (those who couldn’t read and write)
- After the war, the tests were adapted for civilian use and new ones were designed for a variety of situation
Hawthorne effect
the classic Hawthorne studies apparently showed that worker productivity was increased by the attention to paid workers
- BUT recent research has debunked the classic Hawthorne studies
job analysis
*the procedure for determining the duties and skill requirements of a job and the kind of person who should be hired for it.
•The information obtained is then used for developing job descriptions (a list of what the job entails) and the job specifications ( a list of a job’s human requirements, or what kind of people to hire for the job
Main steps in a job analysis project
- Identify purpose
- Who to include
- What methods to choose
- Communicate the project
- Collect all relevant materials
- Analyse the job
- Write up and integrate the data
- Review
- Feedback outcomes
Sources of job information
• Subject matter experts (SME, i.e. person who has direct, up-to-date experience with the job for a long enough time to be familiar with all of its tasks_
1. The job incumbent
2. The supervisor
3. Trained job analyst
• In general, incumbents and supervisors are the best sources of descriptive job information, and job analysts are better qualified for comparisons among a set of jobs
Methods to collect job analysis information
- Review written materials
- Standardised measures
- Job participation
- Interviews
- Job diaries/activity logs
- Observations
- Survey questionnaires
- Focus groups
- Multiple methods are preferred, but select the most appropriate for the purpose
Methods to collect job analysis information - details
1: Review written materials
• E.g. previous job descriptions, O*NET
• Existing material should always be checked to ensure that it is contemporary and relevant
2: standardised measures
• E.g. position analysis questionnaire (PAQ): a structured questionnaire that analyses various jobs in terms of almost 200 jobs elements that are arranged into six categories
3: job participation
• A job analyst performs a particular job or job operation to get a first-hand understanding of how the job is performed
4: interviews
• Ask SME’s about the major duties of the position; the education, experience and skill required; the physical and mental demands etc.
• Accounts may be biased, so job analysts may want to interview a number of different SME’s
5: job diaries/activity logs
• Job incumbents record their daily activities in diary
• Provides a detailed account of the worker’s job
• Can be quite time consuming
Job analysis issues
- Jobs change over time, so job analyses should be conducted on a periodic basis
- The concept of a ‘job’ has been changing over the past few years. Organisations need to be flexible and responsive to compete in the global environment. Thus, jobs are less well-defined now and tend not to have a clearly delineated set of responsibilities
- Many prefer the term ‘work analysis’ as it focuses on tasks and skills that can be transferred from one job to another
Personnel selection
• Selection involves matching the person to the job or organisation, and then evaluating the effectiveness of that match
• Need information on:
- What the job requires
- What the person has to offer (KSAO’s)
- How well the person performs in that type of work
The selection process: utility
- Company performance depends on employees
- It is costly to recruit and hire employees
- There are legal implications of incompetent selection
- Can depend on selection ratio* and base rate of success*
Base rate of success
- Base rates: the proportion of hires considered successful before implementation of selection system
- The higher the base rate the less likely a new system will be beneficial
Steps in the selection process 1
1: employee recruitment
• Employee recruitment: process by which companies attract qualified applicants
• Employee referrals and applicant-initiated contracts yield higher quality workers with lower rate of turnover than newspaper ads or employment agency placement
- Ask current employees, they might know people appropriate for the job
• Internet sites have lots of job seekers and employers and require sifting through many potential applicants
• Employees try to sell themselves to companies, but companies also try to sell themselves to employees
• Characteristics of recruitment program and recruiters can influence applicants’ decisions to accept or reject job offers
• Some companies ‘oversell’ themselves
• Realistic job previews (RJP): an accurate presentation of the prospective job and organisation made to applicants
• RJP’s increases job commitment and satisfaction; decrease turnover
• RJP’s allow applicants to self-select, lower unrealistically high job expectations, and may provide applicants with information that will later be useful on the job
• But, applicants are more likely to turn down a job offer when RJP presented
Steps in the selection process 2
2: employee screening
• Employee screening: the process of reviewing information about job applicants to select workers
1. Applications and resumes
- Purpose: to collect biographical information, which can be used to predict future job performance
- First impressions count
- Questions that are no job-related should not be on applications forms
- It can be difficult to evaluate and interpret this information to determine most qualified applicants
2. References
- May have limited importance because:
o It is unlikely that applicants will give details of someone who would say something bad
o All references can be so positive that employers can’t distinguish between applicants
o Litigation against employers who provide bad references has caused some employers to refuse to write them
- Still widely used in postgrad schools and professional positions
o Often include rating forms
o Some get applicants to waive rights to see letter
3. Employment testing assessment centres
- Most employers use standardised tests because it can be costly and time-consuming to create valid and reliable tests
- Measure
a. Biodata
o Biodata: background information and personal characteristics
o There are no standardised bio-data instruments, and they can be difficult to develop
o Can be effective for screening and placement
b. Cognitive ability
o Tests of general intellectual ability or tests of specific cognitive skills
o Provides an indication of the individual’s learning potential and capacity to manage complexity in problem solving, decision making etc.
o Cognitive ability is predictive of job success, but validity moderated by complexity of job
o These tests may have adverse impact on particular groups
c. Mechanical ability
o Standardised tests have been developed to measure abilities in identifying, recognising, and applying mechanical principles
o Effective screening for positions involving operating and repairing machinery, consutrction and engineering
d. Motor and sensory ability
o Motor tests: e.g. speed tests that require manipulation of small parts to measure fine motor dexterity
o Sensory tests: e.g. tests of hearing, visual acuity, and perceptual discrimination
e. Jobs skills and knowledge
o Work samples tests: measure applicants’ abilities to perform brief examples of important job tasks
o Positive: clearly related and can serve as realistic job preview
o Negative: can be expensive and time-consuming
o Can be one of the best predictors of job performance
o Job knowledge tests: measure specific types of knowledge required to perform a job
f. Personality
o Before 1990’s considered invalid predictors by researchers although used by practitioners
o Now: work-related personality characteristics can be reasonably good predictors of job performance, especially when they are derived from job analysis
o Some personality measures (e.g. MMPI) are used to screen out applicants who posses’ psychopathologies
g. Integrity
o Designed to assess an applicant’s honesty and character through questions concerning drug use, shoplifting, petty theft, etc
o Although overt integrity tests are easy to ‘fake good’, covert tests are not, and the results are somewhat predictive of job performance
o Integrity tests are valid predictors of dishonesty and counterproductive behaviours
h. Other tests
o Drug testing is on the rise
o Graphology: analysis of handwriting
- Assessment centres: Structured setting in which applicants take part in multiple activities, monitored by a group of evaluators
- Typically used in large organisations for managerial positions
- Can be good predictors of managerial success, but can be very costly
4. Interviews
- One of the most common selection procedures
- Validity varies according to how the interview is conducted
a. Traditional unstructured interviews
o In unstructured interviews you simply ask questions that come to mind
o No formalised ‘scoring’ for the quality of each answer
o May actually diminish the tendency to make simple stereotype judgements
o Physically attractive people hired more than those less physically attractive, although not by the most experienced managers
o Unstructured interviews often give rise to poor selection decisions and sometimes lack predictive validity
o There can be low level of agreement between interviewers
o Factors that can undermine an interview’s usefulness
Applicant self-presentation
Snap judgements
Negative emphasis
Self-fulfilling prophecies
Misunderstanding the job
Interview skills (e.g. communication) may not relate to job
Pressure to hire
Candidate-order (contrast) error
Influence of non-verbal behaviour
Telegraphing
Too much/ too little talking
Similar-to-me effect
Halo effect
Other personal prejudices/biases
b. Structured interviews
o All applicants are evaluated in the same manner (same information is obtained in the same situation from all applicants, who are then compared on a common, relevant set of dimensions)
o Structured interviews are better than traditional interviews
o Situational questions: asks interviewees how they would deal with a specific job-related, hypothetical situations
o Behavioural questions: asks interviewees to draw on past job incidents and behaviours to deal with hypothetical future work situations
o Job knowledge questions: assesses interviews knowledge about the job
o Background questions: supplements information from resume and application form
Steps in the selection process 3
3: employee selection and placement
• Employee selection: the actual process of choosing people for employment from a pool of applicants
• Once employers have gathered information about job applicants, they can combine this information in various ways to make selection decisions
• Usually these decisions are made subjectively, but such decisions are error prone
• Decisions can be made more objectively using:
- Multiple regression: a statistical decision-making model
- Multiple cut-off model: uses a minimum cut-off score for each of the various predictors of job performance
- Multiple hurdle model: requires an acceptance or rejection decision to be made at each of several stages in the screening process. Applicants who do not pass one of the hurdles are no longer considered for the job
• Employee placement: the process of assigning workers to appropriate jobs
• Only takes place when there are two or more positions that a new worker could fill
Steps in the selection process 4
4: validity check
• Test the selection procedures to determine if they succeed in identifying the best workers for the job
Adverse impact:
occurs when members of one sub-group are selected disproportionately more or less often then members of another sub group
Training
the systematic acquisition of attitudes, concepts, knowledge, roles or skills that result in improved performance at work
Development:
the set of activities that workers undergo to broaden and refine their KSA’s
When is training needed?
• Initial training after selection
- Showing the individual how to do the current job
• Conversion training
- Something about the job changes
• Organisational change
- Jobs change and centralise
• Maintenance of skills
- Some skills aren’t used all the time; therefore people need to be reminded
• Attitude change
- Increasingly diverse workplaces, need to be able to work well with others e.g. sexual harassment
The training process
1: needs assessment
• Needs assessment: a set of activities designed to collect data about what the organisation needs out of the training program
• Overlooked and underfunded – only 6% of companies have it
• Key questions: what does the training need to accomplish
1. In terms of organisation’s goals?
- Short and long term goals of the organisation? What does the organisation want from the training? What means does the company have for training?
- Look at norms, are training programs common? If people sceptical do these people meet the training goals? Training less likely if it won’t be taken seriously
2. In terms of specific tasks?
- What is going to change? What performance levels should be achieved?
3. In terms of the people involved?
- Who are we training? What knowledge, skills and abilities do these people have? Need to know the gap between what they know and what they need to know. Focus on whether or not people just choose not to do the task or if they are unable/don’t know how to
2: set objectives
• Learning objectives (i.e. what the trainee should be able to do or know at the end of the training) should be derived from needs assessment
• What is it that we want people to be able to do? This should be derived from the needs assessment
3: training design
• When deciding on the training design, you should take the following factors into consideration:
1. Learning objectives, common objectives include:
- Information acquisition
- Skills development
2. Principles of learning: psychological theory and research can provide key principles for instructional design
a. Conceptual organisers and meaningful encoding: can help orient the trainee to the material by providing a framework for learning
b. Modelling: instructor demonstrates overall pattern of behaviours and sometimes accompanies this with verbal elaboration
- Based on social learning theory (humans can learn indirectly by observing others)
- Bandura, operant conditioning
c. Reinforcement: the greater the reinforcement (reward) that follows a behaviour, the more easily and rapidly that behaviour will be learned
- This should be done in a timely manner
- Emotional recognition, feedback, getting a raise – all ways to increase performance
d. Feedback: knowledge of the results of one’s actions
- Most effective when it is accurate, timely, and constructive
- Be as constructive as possible – tips for refinement
e. Cognitive load: try to optimise cognitive load . types of cognitive load:
- Intrinsic load: imposed by the task to be learned
- Extraneous load: imposed by the instructional design itself
- Germane load: useful load that can be added when the learning task itself has low intrinsic load
- Don’t want it to be to small that people get bored, not to hard that people are deterred
f. Whole versus part learning
- Whole learning: entire task is practiced at once
- Part learning: subtasks are practiced separately and later combined
- Should learn different parts before the whole thing. Part learning is better when the task is too complicated to be taught at once. However sometimes tasks can be separated into parts e.g. riding a bike, you have to learn it all together
g. Massed versus distributed practice
- Massed practice: individuals practice a task continuously without rest
- Distributed practice: provides individuals with rest intervals between practice sessions, which are spaced over a longer period of time (therefore are better, break up the learning into smaller parts)
h. Active practice: involves actively participating in a training or work task rather than passively observing someone else performing the task
i. Overlearning: present trainees with several extra learning opportunities even after they have demonstrated mastery of a task. Results in automaticity
j. Fidelity: the extent to which the task trained is similar to the task required on the job. How realistic is the training? Remember things better when we are in the situation we learned in
k. Testing effect: long-term memory is often increased when some of the learning period is devoted to retrieving the to-be-remembered information. Retrieving information constantly leads to better memory
3. Trainer qualifications: trainers should have
- Have knowledge of the organisation
- Be knowledgeable about content
- Be motivated to train
- Understand principles of learning
4. Individual differences: should accommodate differences in:
- Literacy
- Motivation to learn
- Preferred learning style
4: training implementation
• Implementation of training: may use a variety of different modes
• On site:
- On the job training (hard to do effectively)
- Job rotation (get people to learn from a variety of different jobs, gives better idea of operation as a whole)
- Apprenticeship (work with an expert for an amount of time)
- Vestibule training (isolated environment with specialist equipment to simulate the real conditions)
- Online
• Off-site
- Lectures/seminars
- Audio-visual
- Conferences
- Programmed/computer-assisted instruction
- Simulation/role-playing
5: training evaluation
• Kirkpatrick’s (1976) evaluation of training:
- Reactions: did they like the training?
- Learning: did they learn anything from the training?
- Behaviour: do trainees behave any differently back on the job?
- Results: did the training have the desired outcome?
• Overall “training effectiveness”
- Did the training work?
• Training transfer: degree to which trainees apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes gained in training to their jobs
- If they don’t apply the training to the work the training was a failure
• Transfer can happen in three ways:
- Initiation: does the person start using the training material on the job?
- Maintenance: does the person keep using the training material on the job?
- Generalisation: can the person adapt what they learned as the job changes around them?
Future directions
- Increased technology
- Diversity of the workforce
- Continuous learning
- Adaptation and flexibility
Teams
• Team: interdependent collection of individuals who work together toward a common goal and who share responsibility for specific outcomes for their organisations
- Share resources
- Coordination
- People always know what group they are in – identifiable
• There is a growing trend in organisations to use work groups
Factors that affect team performance
• Inputs - Environment or context - Task characteristics - Team members • Processes - Norms - Communication and coordination - Cohesion - Decision making
Environment or context
- The resources and support that the team receives from the organisation affects team performance
- Training, managerial support, and communication and cooperation between teams were correlated with team member satisfaction and performance
Type of task
• The divisibility of the task: divisible vs unitary
- E.g. a picture book, one does pictures and one does words
• Team member are motivated by tasks that require a variety of skills, provide autonomy, are meaningful and important, and provide performance feedback
- Job characteristics successfully predicts the success of a team
Team members
• Personality predictors of teamwork
- Agreeableness and conscientiousness predict supervisor ratings of work team performance, objective measures of work team accuracy, and work completed
• Cognitive ability predictors of team-work
- General cognitive ability and job specific skills are good predictors of team performance
