Cathy Lint / PSY 435 / Week 1 Assignment
Industrial/Organizational Psychology Worksheet
1. Describe the evolution of the field of industrial/organizational psychology.
• The field of organizational and industrial psychology dates back in the late 1800s into the early 1900s. In the United States and the United Kingdom, experimental psychologists as they were known studied job performance and the efficacy of being organized in the workplace. Walter Dill Scott and Hugo Munsterburg who were at the time professors in college and experimental psychologists were considered the founders of the American Industrial and Organizational field of psychology. Fredrick Winslow Taylor was another person who influenced the field of Industrial and Organization psychology through his work as an engineer. Taylor during the 18th through 19th century paid special attention to productivity by employees in factories, which Taylor called Scientific Management.
• In 1913 the first published textbook was introduced for Industrial and organizational psychology. In 1917 job placement tests were developed for employment. In 1921 the Psychological Corporation was introduced and awarded the first PhD in this field. In 1924 the Hawthorne studies were introduced, which studied what increased employee performances. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed, which aided in the treatment and hiring of individuals. In 1970, APA adopted the name Division of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and in 1990 the ADA passage stopped discrimination practices against persons with disabilities (Spector, 2012).
2. Explain why industrial/organizational psychology should be considered a science. Include an explanation of how descriptive and inferential statistics are used in I/O research.
Industrial and Organization Psychology is considered a science because this type of science deals with statistics, research methods and analyzing the data that is developed from...