WORK AND HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
HOORCOLLEGES/BOEK
HOORCOLLEGE 1 (CHAPTER 1)
WHAT IS WORK?
Work = ‘A set of coordinated and goal-directed activities that are conducted in
exchange for something else, usually in some form of monetary reward’
WHAT IS WORK PSYCHOLOGY?
Three subfields:
1. Organizational psychology: the context in which people do their
work, leadership, coordination and team work
2. Personal psychology: the characteristics of the person conducting a
particular work task or selecting or hiring new staff
3. Work psychology: characteristics of work itself use insights of
psychology, to help workers to achieve their work-goals in an optimal
manner and to help organizations achieve their goals. It is about the job
itself and not about the context or reward systems!
Central aim: use insights from psychology (related to people’s
behavior, motivation, thoughts, and emotions) to help workers
achieve their work-goals in an optimal manner, and to help
organizations achieve their goals
WHY IS WORK PSYCHOLOGY IMPORTANT?
1. Because of the amount of time we spend working
2. Because work has the potential to make us happy
3. Because work has the potential to make us sick
4. Because of the increasing expectations of employers the targets for
employees are setting higher, people are expected to not only do a good
job but also additional things.
THE MEANING OF WORK
Examining the functions of working compare the effects of having a job
to those of not having a job
Jahoda (1982) concluded in her Relative Deprivation Model that apart
from providing an income, having employment also provides five classes
of social benefits: time structure, opportunities for social contact,
sharing of a common purpose, social identity or status, and regular activity
THE ROOTS OF WORK PSYCHOLOGY
1850 - 1930
Pre-industrial/agrarian Industrial revolution
Most people did agricultural work it changed in industrial revolution,
because there were more factories (new manufacturing processes)
PSYCHOTECHNICS / APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
Psychotechnics = The practical or technological application of
psychology, as in analysis of social or economic problems
o It became important in psychology
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
Systematic approach to make work as efficient as possible, to get the
maximum out of each man and machine focus on the task
Founding father: Frederick Winslow Taylor
, “As to the importance of obtaining the maximum output of each man and
each machine, it is only through the adoption of modern scientific
management that this great problem can be finally solved”
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT: SOLUTION
Simplification of tasks
Examine the best way to conduct the tasks
Training workers in the one best way to conduct the tasks
Seperating the planning of tasks from their execution
Selecting workers for particular tasks
1930 – NOW
HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT
Based on experiments conducted in General Electric’s Hawthorne plant,
this school of thought focused particularly on the social context in which
the work tasks were conducted.
HAWTHORNESTUDIES (1924 – 1932)
Researches: National Research Council, Fritz Roethlisberger, Lloyd
Warmer, & Elton Mayo
Found out that the workers were not lazy and stupid, but they are real
people with characteristics and a private life. They often had more
potential than people thought.
Because of the Hawthorn studies, employees weren’t seen as isolated
individuals such factors and concepts as group influences, social status,
informal communication, roles, norms were used to explain behavior
WHY WAS SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT WIDELY APPLIED IN THE US,
BUT MUCH LESS IN EUROPE?
Less applied in Europe because unions were less powerful than in Europe
(could not protect the workers sufficiently) and because immigrants from
Europe often did not have a choice but to accept work under any condition
CONTEMPORARY WORK PSYCHOLOGY
Aims to promote “sustainable performance”, maximizing work
performance as well as worker health and well-being
o Well-being = The state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy
o Health = a state of complete physical, mental and social well-
being and not merely the absence of disease of infirmity.”
WELL-BEING AT WORK
Health (physical well-being)
o Work as a source of disease and injuries, stress, and health benefits
Relationships (Social well-being)
o Work as a source of trust, support, reciprocity, exploitation, and power
abuse
Happiness (psychological well-being)
o Work as a source of pleasure and satisfaction (passive) and fulfilment /
engagement (active) or the opposite thereof
PERFORMANCE
The action or process of performing a task or function
A task or operation seen in terms of how successfully it is performed
WORK PERFORMANCE: ACTION OR OUTCOME?
Action Performance is what the organization hires one to do, and do
well
, Outcome The consequence or the result of the individual worker’s
behavior
DIMENSIONS OF INDIVIDUAL JOB PERFORMANCE
Task performance (proficiency)
Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB; going the extra mile)
o Organizations expect the people to not only do the task wel (= task
performance) but also go to the extra mile, so do additional things
that are not associated with the task performance itself (=OCB)
Counterproductive work behaviors
o Negative behavior from people at work when they do not like their job
Employee withdrawal behaviors
o Negative behavior from people at work when they do not like their job
PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACTS
A set of promises or expectations that are exchanged between the parties
in an employment relationship
THE TIMES, THEY ARE CHANGIN
The nature of work has changed from mainly manufacturing work to
predominantly service and knowledge work;
New ways of working are characterized by:
o Flexibility in the timing of work
o Flexibility in the place of work
o The facilitation of information technologies.
Because of globalization and increasing use of ICT organizations must
continuously adapt to new realities
TASK ANALYSIS
Task analysis the study of what an employee (or team) is required to
do, in terms of actions and/or processes, to achieve a system goal.
The aim of work-psychological task analysis is to lead to a more
efficient and effective integration of the human factor into system designs
and operations via task (re)design in order to optimize human performance
and safety.
Theoretical model that indicates which task characteristics will be
analysed.
4 different approaches:
1. Behaviour description approach focus is on the actual
behaviours employees display in executing the task
2. Behaviour requirements approach focuses on the actual
behaviour employees should display to perform the task in a
successful way
3. Ability requirements approach tasks are analysed in terms of
employees’ abilities, knowledge, skills and personal characteristics.
4. Task characteristics approach focus on analysing the
objective characteristics of a task, independent from the behaviour
that is actually displayed (behaviour description) or that should be
displayed (behaviour requirements) or the abilities needed (ability
requirements)
Task analysis techniques can be divided into 3 categories
1. Data collection techniques interviews, survey questionnaires,
observations, organizational documents and records;
2. Task-representation techniques use graphic descriptions such
as flow charts and hierarchical networks
