Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T08:44:20.471Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

News Flash! Work Psychology Discovers Workers!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2016

Joel Lefkowitz
Joel Lefkowitz*
Affiliation:
Baruch College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joel Lefkowitz, Psychology Department, Baruch College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, 55 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Bergman and Jean (2016) have contributed an important essay to the continuing self-reflection and maturation of the field of industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology—or as it is known in much of the world outside the United States, work psychology.1 They clearly and adequately document that the field has relatively neglected to study the world of (largely lower-level) workers who are not managers, executives, professionals, or students and that this has affected adversely the validity of our science and the relevance of our professional practice in a number of not-so-intuitively obvious ways. But as critical as those observations are, I believe the most important aspect of their piece has to do with the inferences they offer as to why our published literature is so skewed. They suggest six potential, not mutually exclusive, explanations, including the possibility of personal biases among I-O psychologists. However, before focusing on those explanations, it should be informative to place the Bergman/Jean thesis in context. There is a growing, recent body of critical evidence and/or commentary concerning this and similar issues—although less consideration generally has been given to their likely causes.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 137 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Association, American Psychological. (2002). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. American Psychologist, 57 (12), 1060–1073.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergman, M. A., & Jean, V. A. (2016). Where have all the “workers” gone? A critical analysis of the unrepresentativeness of our samples relative to the labor market in the industrial–organizational psychology literature. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 9, 84–113.Google Scholar
Byrne, Z. S., Hayes, T. L., McPhail, S. M., Hakel, M. D., Cortina, J. M., & McHenry, J. J. (2014). Educating industrial–organizational psychologists for science and practice: Where do we go from here? Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 7, 2–14.Google Scholar
Darley, J. G. (1968). 1917: A journal is born. Journal of Applied Psychology, 52 (1, Pt. 1), 1–10.Google Scholar
Gladwin, T. E., & Figner, B. (2014). “Hot” cognition and dual systems: Introduction, criticisms, and ways forward. In Wilhelms, E. A. & Reyna, V. F. (Eds.), Frontiers of Cognitive Psychology Series: Neuroeconomics, judgment and decision making (pp. 157–180). New York, NY: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. (2009). Everybody talks about organizational justice but nobody does anything about it. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 2 (2), 181–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hafferty, F. W. (1998). Beyond curriculum reform: Confronting medicine's hidden curriculum. Academic Medicine, 73 (4) 403–407.
Lefkowitz, J. (1990). The scientist–practitioner model is not enough. The Industrial–Organizational Psychologist, 28 (1), 47–52.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2003). Ethics and values in industrial–organizational psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2005). The values of industrial-organizational psychology: Who are we? The Industrial–Organizational Psychologist, 43 (2), 13–20.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2008). To prosper, organizational psychology should . . . expand its values to match the quality of its ethics. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 439–453.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2009). Promoting employee justice: It's even worse than that! Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 2, 220–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2010). Industrial–organizational psychology's recurring identity crises: It's a values issue! Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 3 (3), 293–299.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2011). The science, practice and morality of work psychology. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 4 (1), 112–115.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2012a). From humanitarian to humanistic work psychology: The morality of business. In Carr, S. C., MacLachlan, M., & Furnham, A. (Eds.), Humanitarian work psychology: Alignment, harmonization and cultural competence. London, UK: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2012b). The impact of practice values on our science. The Industrial–Organizational Psychologist, 50 (2), 16–22.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2013a). Values and ethics of a changing I-O psychology: A call to (further) action. In Olson-Buchanan, J. B., Koppes Bryan, L. L., & Thompson, L. F. (Eds.), Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Frontier Series: Using I-O psychology for the greater good: Helping those who help others (pp. 13–42). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2013b). Values of I-O psychology, another example: What and whom we don't study and what it all suggests about the profession. The Industrial–Organizational Psychologist, 51 (2), 46–56.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2014). Educating industrial–organizational psychologists for science, practice, and social responsibility. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 7 (1), 38–44.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, J. (2016). The maturation of a profession: A work psychology for the new millennium. In Maynard, D. C., McWha, I., & Berry, M. O. (Eds.), Humanitarian work psychology and the global development agenda: Case studies and interventions (pp. 200–204). Hove, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
MacCoun, R. J. (1998). Biases in the interpretation and use of research results. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 259–287.Google Scholar
Ruggs, E. N., Law, C., Cox, C. B., Roehling, M. V., Wiener, R. L., Hebl, M. R., & Barron, L. (2013). Gone fishing: I-O psychologists’ missed opportunities to understand marginalized employees’ experiences with discrimination. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 6 (1), 39–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherbaum, C. A., Goldstein, H. W., Yusko, K. P., Ryan, R., & Hanges, P. J. (2012). Intelligence 2.0: Reestablishing a research program on g in I-O psychology. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 5 (2), 128–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, H. W., & Rupp, D. E. (2011). Experiencing work: An essay on a person-centric work psychology. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 4, 83–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar