Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Type of psychology: Social psychology
Fields of study: Group processes; motivation theory; social perception
and cognition
Industrial/organizational psychology applies psychological research methods and theories
to issues of importance in work organizations. From its beginnings as psychology
applied to a few personnel topics, it has expanded to deal with almost all aspects of
work, changing as they have.
Key concepts
• experimentation
• fairness in work settings
• field research
• industrial psychology
• organizational psychology
• scientific method
Industrial/organizational psychology (often shortened to I/O psychology)
is a somewhat deceptive title for the field. Even when industrial psychology
alone was used to label it, practitioners were involved with issues and activities
far beyond solving industrial problems—for example, designing procedures
for selecting salespeople, advertising methods, and reducing accidents
on public transportation. “Organizational” suggests the application of
knowledge to organizations, but the intended meaning is closer to “the
study of forces that influence how people and their activities at work are organized.”
In colleges and universities, I/O psychology is a long-recognized discipline.
Graduate programs leading to the M.A. and, more commonly, Ph.D.
degrees in this field are most typically offered within psychology departments,
sometimes in collaboration with departments of business; occasionally
they are offered by business departments alone. In most cases, students
working toward graduate degrees in I/O psychology first study a wide range
of psychological topics, then study in even greater detail those that make up
the I/O specialty. The study of research methods, statistical tools for evaluating
findings, motivation, personality, and so on forms a base from which psychological
testing, interviewing, job analysis, and performance evaluation
are studied in depth.