Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Personality tests are valid – to a point.  It’s almost undisputed that the major personality tests generally tell us something useful about a person.  But how much they tell us is usually pretty small – they make us only slightly smarter about the person taking the test. 

So, how do you change the tests so they make us more than just slightly smarter?  Context, context, context!  One name used for context is “frame of reference.”  So, instead of a context-free item like “I pay attention to details,” you go with an item like “I pay attention to details at work.” 

Lievens and his colleagues challenged the conventional wisdom about why context works.  It has been widely argued that contexts reduces the variability among test-takers, making it less likely that some of the test takers will answer a question across all contexts and others will self-select a context in which they interpret the test questions. 

Sports fans have heard commentators talk about certain players "understanding the team concept." But what does that mean in the organizational world? Is there such an understanding, and can you measure it in job applicants (and thereby select employees based on it) and does it predict job performance once hired into a team?

Mumford and his colleagues have come up with a measure of this very thing, and have provided evidence that it is a valid measure. They call the aspect of this understanding of teams that they focused on "team role knowledge." They define it as "the knowedge an individual possesses about the nature of team roles and the situational contingencies govening their use." They go on to explain that the term "encompasses the declarative and procedural knowledge of role types and contingencies that is needed to effectively perform team roles."

All of us have either seen anger used, or have used it ourselves, in a workplace conflict.  It’s safe to say that sometimes it is effective in getting the result the angry person seeks, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it backfires and makes matters worse, generating stubbornness in the person who is the object of the anger.

Van Kleef and Cote have looked at the question of whether there is a pattern to when anger works and when it does not, and have concluded that it has something to do with the appropriateness of the expression of anger and the relative power of the two involved in the conflict.

As even Snow White knew, good moods in the workplace are to be encouraged.  It is not news, either to Walt Disney or to organizational psychologists, that positive moods not only feel good, but also improve task performance.  What is not fully understood is why that is so.  Why is it that positive mood generally improves performance?  Tsai, Chen, and Lieu think that it is a combination factors both intrapersonal (motivational) and interpersonal (giving help to and receiving help from co-workers) that provide the key link.

If we see Barack Obama in the midst of an excited crowd of admirers, are we more likely to see him as charismatic?

According to Pastor and his colleagues, we are.  But don’t get excited, you uncharismatic leaders out there.  Simply persuading your supporters to get excited won’t substitute for your own charisma – you’ve got to have that, first.  Only then, with your own charisma established, will the sight of your excited supporters increase observers’ belief that you are charismatic.

People who have a really tough job, one that may involve being exposed to danger to yourself or others (like a firefighter), sometimes drink to cope, particularly after critical incidents that cause extraordinary levels of stress.  No surprise there.  Other than individual interventions, is there anything an employer can do to prevent that from happening?