Comprehensive College Notes on Work and Organizational Psychology
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Course
Arbeids- en Organisatiepsychologie
Institution
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
Comprehensive lecture notes on the subject of Work and Organizational Psychology A&O written in English. Examples and images are used to make the text/terms clearer.
Work and Organizational Psychology
Lecturer: Kilian Wawoe & Sanne Feenstra
Lecture 1: 31 okt 2023
What is Industrial and Organizational Psychology?
Different types of motivation:
Intrinsic motivation is defined as the motivation to engage in a behavior because of
the inherent satisfaction of the activity rather than the desire for a reward or specific
outcome
Extrinsic motivation is driven by external rewards, these can be tangible such as
money or grades or intangible, such as praise or game (reward and punishment)
Carl Marx saw capitalist society as clearly divided into two classes, he believed that the poor
will get poorer and the rich will get richer
The bourgeois own capital, this includes resources like land, means of production
(factories), materials and money
The workers, they don’t own capital, they sell their labor power to the bourgeoisie
Marx argued that the bourgeois exploit the labor offered by the workers to make profit. So,
Marxism is a political, cultural and economic philosophy that theorizes that social conflict
exists due to constant power struggles between capitalists and workers.
Frederick Taylor also believed that people do not like their work and need to be ‘rewarded’
to motivate them to work.
Important moments in the brief history of psychology:
1876-1930, important names such as Hugo Munsterburg, James McKeen Cattell,
Walter Dill Scott and Walter van Dyke Bingham
World War I, Army Alpha and Army Beta Tests
1917, the first Ph.D in industrial psychology awarded to Lillian Gilbreth for research
in time and motion study (human engineering)
1930-1964, Hawthorne studies, human relations movement, theories of motivation,
emotional world of the worker, studies of job satisfaction
World War II
Civil rights act of 1964 and title VII
The Hawthorne studies tested such variables as the effect of lightning, work breaks and pay
incentives, almost any change to the experimental conditions led to increase in productivity.
The Hawthorne effect is the effect of an intervention on a researched person that is solely
due to the fact that he or she participates in a study, a type of human behavior reactivity in
which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior because they are being observed.
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,The Hawthorne studies were the first time researchers realized that workers also need human
relations and emotional support.
Changes in the workplace since 1980
Personal computing, telecommuting, virtual teams and videoconferencing
Providing a service vs manufacturing ‘goods’
Nature of work is more fluid, little stability, greater diversity and global workplace
Team vs the individual and family-friendly workplaces
Hygiene factors are the factors that characterize the context or environment of a person’s
work, factors which are necessary for people to work, not those that actually motivate people
to work harder.
Motivational factors are financial incentives, interpersonal support, acknowledgement for
good work, making progress and clear goals.
According to Deci & Ryan (2001), three basic psychological needs motivate self-initiated
behavior and specify essential nutrients for individual psychological health and well-being:
Competence, relatedness and autonomy
The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits
What is the influence of hybrid working? We are
group animals, some people prefer the autonomy that
working from home provides, but most people prefer
relatedness and competence/growth that comes with
working at the office.
Multicultural and cross-cultural issues in psychology. Culture is defined as a system in which
individuals share meaning and common ways of viewing events and objects, sharing of
meanings and interpretations.
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory
is a framework for cross-cultural
psychology, it shows the effects of a
society’s culture on the values of its
members and how these values relate
to behavior, using a structure derived
from factor analysis.
You can measure cultures in terms of
dimensions and look at differences
between countries.
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,Qualitative and quantitative research
Qualitative methods include procedures like observation, interviews, case studies and
analysis of written documents, this generally produces flow diagrams and narrative
descriptions of events/processes
Quantitative methods rely on tests, rating scales and physiological measures, yield
numerical results
Common research designs in psychology
Experimental, random assignment of participants to conditions, conducted in a
laboratory or the workplace
Non-experimental, does not include manipulation or assignment to different
conditions, two common designs: observational design observes and records behavior
or a survey/questionnaire design
Quasi-experimental, non-random assignment of participants to conditions
Generalizability in research, the application of results from one study or sample to other
participants or situations, the more areas a study includes, the greater its generalizability.
Very simple, it is a measure of how useful the results of a study are for a broader group of
people or situations. Every time a compromise is made, the generalizability of results is
reduced.
Describing a score distribution, measures of central tendency: the mean, mode and median.
The
mean is found by adding all numbers in the data set and dividing by the number of values, the
mode is the number that occurs most often in a data set and the median is the middle value
when a data set is ordered from least to greatest.
Statistical power is the likelihood of finding statistically significant difference when true
difference exists, the smaller the sample size, the lower the power to detect a true or real
difference.
Correlation coefficient:
Statistic or measure of association
Reflects magnitude (numerical value) and direction (+ of -) of relationship between 2
variables, ranges from 0.00 to 1.00 ( or minus 1.00)
3
, Meta-analysis is a statistical method for combining results from many studies to draw a
general conclusion. Statistical artifacts are characteristics of a particular study that distort the
results, the sample size is typically the most influential statistical artifact.
Interpretation through reliability and validity
Reliability is the consistency or stability of a measure, test-retest reliability is
calculated by correlation measurements taken at time 1 with measurements taken at
time 2
Validity is whether measurements taken accurately and completely represent what is
to be measured
A predictor is a test chosen or developed to assess identified abilities or other characteristics
(KSAO’s) meaning knowledge, skills, ability and other characteristics.
A criterion is the outcome variable describing important performance domain.
Moderation and mediation
Moderation is a way to check whether that third variable influences the strength or
direction of the relationship between an independent and dependent variable
Mediation is the observed relationship between an independent variable and a
dependent variable via the inclusion of a third explanatory variable, known as a
mediator variable
Lecture 2: 06 nov 2023
Individual differences and Assessment
Individual differences are about the dissimilarities between or among two or more people, this
way of thinking started in 1890 with Cattell and the concept of the ‘mental test’
He realized we were different and started to test the differences in psychology
World War I gave a huge boost to psychological testing/intelligence tests because they
needed to know who was best to be soldier, medic, leader etc.
Varieties of individual difference: cognitive ability or the ability to learn, physical ability or
how fit a person can be, personality, interest, knowledge and emotion.
Fundamental assumptions in the applying individual differences model
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