Psychologists From The United States

"In the organizational sciences (e.g., organizational behavior, organizational psychology), one of the more misunderstood terms is “organizational theory.” To some, organizational theory is a field of study; to others, it is the process of using metaphors to describe organizational processes... or it represents an attempt to determine the best way to organize work organizations. The term is used to indicate all of these things, but an “organizational theory” is really just a way of organizing purposeful human action. Given the diversity of purposeful human endeavors, there are numerous ways to organize them, and, hence, a great many organizational theories."

"Hackett and Guion (1985) offer a number of explanations for the weak relation between job satisfaction and absenteeism. One reason is the measurement of absenteeism itself. Although at first glance absenteeism would appear to be a rather simple variable, it is actually quite complex. For example, when measuring absences, one can distinguish between excused and unexcused absences. Excused absences would be allowed for events such as illnesses and funerals. In unexcused absences, the employee simply does not show up at work. One could argue that job satisfaction would be more likely to play a role in unexcused than in excused absences."

"Our central argument is that industrial relations practices and outcomes are shaped by the interactions of environmental forces along with the strategic choices and values of American managers, union leaders, workers and public policy decision makers."

"The earliest scientific investigations related to the field of occupational stress were conducted by the well-known physiologist in the early part of the twentieth century (e.g., Cannon, 1914). Cannon was a pioneer in the investigation of the relationship between emotions and physiological responses, and is perhaps best known for having coined the term homeostasis."

"In terms of academic roots, the field that really has taken the lead in theorizing about the organization of purposeful human behavior is sociology. Sociology is essentially the study of macro-level forces (e.g., social stratification, social institutions) on human behavior (e.g., Merton, 1968; Parsons, 1951)... Given this historical backdrop, it is natural that sociologists would be more interested in the impact of the structure and design of organizations than psychologists would be. In fact, the Hawthorne studies, which are considered one of the most important historical events contributing to the development of organizational psychology, were conducted under the direction of sociologist Elton Mayo."

"Job performance is a deceptively simple term. At the most general level, it can be defined simply as “all of the behaviors employees engage in while at work.” Unfortunately, this is a rather imprecise definition because employees often engage in behaviors at work that have little or nothing to do with job-specific tasks."

"By definition, job performance is behavior, so job performance is rarely measured directly. More typically, what is measured is some external assessment of job performance."

"In the most general sense, organizational psychology is the scientific study of individual and group behavior in formal organizational settings. Katz and Kahn, in their classic work, The Social Psychology of Organizations (1978), stated that the essence of an organization is “patterned” human behavior. When behavior is patterned, some structure is imposed on individuals. This structure typically comes in the form of roles (normative standards governing behavior) as well as a guiding set of values. An organization cannot exist when people just “do their own thing” without any awareness of the behavior of others."

"Job satisfaction is, without a doubt, one of the most heavily studied topics in organizational psychology, as well as in the broader field of industrial/organizational psychology. To emphasize this point, many authors, over the years, have referred to Locke’s chapter in the Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (1976), where he reported that studies dealing with job satisfaction numbered in the thousands."

"Unions are an essential part of the democratic fabric of society, but they are not necessarily desirable or acceptable `in my firm or on my property."

"A critical aspect of the operation of the New Deal system was the long history of incremental change and resistance to more fundamental modification. This incremental adjustment orientation was apparent in government policy, managerial practice, and union bargaining objectives."

"Organizations are complex social systems that sometimes perform remarkably well and sometimes fail miserably. Organizational psychology is a subfield within the larger domain of industrial/organizational psychology that seeks to facilitate a greater understanding of social processes in organizations. Organizational psychologists also seek to use these insights to enhance the effectiveness of organizations—a goal that is potentially beneficial to all."

"Job satisfaction is typically defined as an employee’s level of positive affect toward his or her job or job situation... Along with positive affect, we can add both a cognitive and a behavioral component to this definition... The cognitive aspect of job satisfaction represents an employee’s beliefs about his or her job or job situation; that is, an employee may believe that his or her job is interesting, stimulating, dull, or demanding—to name a few options... The behavioral component represents an employee’s behaviors or, more often, behavioral tendencies toward his or her job. An employee’s level of job satisfaction may be revealed by the fact that he or she tries to attend work regularly, works hard, and intends to remain a member of the organization for a long period of time."

"The investigation of job-related stress involves studying the relationship between stressful aspects of jobs (normally termed {[w|stressors}}) and the reputed results of stressor exposure (normally termed strains). Although several diverse theoretical models of the process by which stressors impact employees exist (e.g., Ivancevich & Matteson, 1980; Jex, in press; Jex & Beehr, 1991; Kahn & Byosiere, 1992), most models propose that employees are exposed to stressful working conditions, these conditions are perceived, and finally employees exhibit strains, which can include behaviors (e.g., increased smoking), physical illness, and psychological distress. On the job stressor side, there have been only a limited number of scales developed, which has tended to focus the field on a relatively small number of potential job stressors, for example, role ambiguity and role conflict. Yet research clearly suggests an important role for other job stressors that have received inadequate attention, such as interpersonal conflict in the workplace (Keenan & Newton, 1985) and organizational constraints on performance."

"Organizational constraints represent situations or things that prevent employees from translating ability and effort into high levels of job performance. The [Organizational Constraints Scale] OCS was based on the work of Peters and O'Connor (1980), who listed 11 areas of constraints that interfered with job performance. These common situational constraints in organizations may include faulty equipment, incomplete or poor information, or perhaps interruptions by others."

"Despite frequent criticism, the vast majority of job stress researchers continue to use subjective self-reports measures for both job stressors and job strains (Jex & Beehr, 1991). Part of the reason is undoubtedly because it makes data collection relatively easy, but ease alone has not made this approach so popular. First, there is a sound theoretical reason behind this choice. Serf-reports represent incumbent perceptions, and perceptions represent an important mediating process in the occupational stress process."

"[The Integrated Model of Work Stress (ISR) model] is straightforward, easy to understand, and has guided much of the work stress research and theorizing in the past 25 years."

"Like role ambiguity, the assessment of role conflict has been primarily through self-report measurement. The scale that has been used most often is that developed by Rizzo et al. (1970). These items ask respondents whether they experience things such as “incompatible requests” and situations in which their work is “accepted by one group but not accepted by others.” A sample item from this scale is, “I receive incompatible requests from two or more people.” Strong agreement with a statement such as this indicates a high level of role conflict. Like the Rizzo et al. role ambiguity scale, this scale has also been the focus of much criticism and debate in the occupational stress literature (Kelloway & Barling, 1990, Netemeyer et al., 1990; Smith et al., 1993; Tracy & Johnson, 1981). Unfortunately, there have been few attempts to develop alternative measures."

"Employee participation cannot and will not be divorced from other human resource practices and organisational strategies. The implication of this argument is that we need to look at the total set of organisational strategies and assess their effects on performance."

"According to Goldstein (1993), many organizations do not train employees adequately. For example, training programs are either poorly designed or designed in a way that does not meet the needs of employees. Either way, employees may be inadequately prepared to meet their role demands. Like the other two role stressors covered in this chapter, role overload is most often assessed through self-report questionnaires. One popular role overload measure is a scale developed by Caplanet al. (1975). As would be expected, these items appropriately reflect the frequency and intensity of role demands (e.g., “How much workload do you have?”). Respondents would typically respond to these items on a scale ranging from “very light” to “extremely heavy. Despite the popularity of this measure, there are undoubtedly other ways to measure role overload that employ non-self-report methods... [such as] some combination of objective and subjective measures."

"The workplace changes being introduced jointly have two basic objectives: (1) to increase the participation and involvement of individuals and informal groups work so as to overcome adversarial relations and increase employee motivation, commitment, and problem-solving potential; and (2) to alter the organization of work so as to simplify work rules, lower costs, and increase flexibility in the management of human resources."

"If one had to choose a theory of learning that is closest to Bandura’s, it would be Tolman’s theory. Although Tolman was a behaviorist, he used mentalistic concepts to explain behavioral phenomena … and Bandura does the same thing. Also, Tolman believed learning to be a constant process that does not require reinforcement, and Bandura believes the same thing. Both Tolman’s theory and Bandura’s theory are cognitive in nature, and neither are reinforcement theories. A final point of agreement between Tolman and Bandura concerns the concept of motivation. Although Tolman believed that learning was constant, he believed further that the information gained through learning was only acted on when there was reason for doing so, such as when a need arose. For example, one may know full well where a drinking fountain is but will act on that information only when one is thirsty. For Tolman, this distinction between learning and performance was extremely important, and it is also important in Bandura’s theory."

"In his approach to the history of psychology, E. G. Boring (1886–1968) stressed the importance of the Zeitgeist in determining whether, or to what extent, an idea or viewpoint will be accepted. Clearly, ideas do not occur in a vacuum. A new idea, to be accepted or even considered, must be compatible with existing ideas. In other words, a new idea will be tolerated only if it arises within an environment that can assimilate it."

"Bud Hergenhahn was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 21, 1934. After attending Chicago public schools, he served for two years in the United States Army. In 1955, after working as a Forest Ranger at Mt. Saint Helens and serving in the Korean War, he enrolled at Western Washington University and graduated in 1959 with a bachelor's degree in Psychology. He earned his Masters from The University of Arizona in 1965, and his Doctorate the very next year. Dr. Hergenhahn spent his thirty-year career at Hamline University in St. Paul Minnesota. His career was peppered with accomplishments and acknowledgements surrounding his cutting edge teaching techniques. He was chairman of the psychology department when he retired in 1996 to focus solely on his writing. His books include Theories of Learning, Theories of Personality, and A History of Psychology."

"Insightful learning is usually regarded as having four characteristics: (1) the transition from presolution to solution is sudden and complete; (2) performance based on a solution gained by insight is usually smooth and free of errors; (3) a solution to a problem gained by insight is retained for a considerable length of time; (4) a principle gained by insight is easily applied to other problems."

"With the respectability of the senses and feelings established, textbooks written by the Scottish philosophers began to include such topics as perception, memory, imagination, association, attention, language, and thinking. Such a textbook was written by Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), titled Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792), and was used at Yale University in 1824."

"According to Wertheimer, reaching an understanding involves many aspects of learners, such as their emotions, attitudes, and perceptions, as well as their intellects. In gaining insight into the solution to a problem, a student need not—in fact, should not—be logical. Rather, the student should cognitively arrange and rearrange the components of the problem until a solution based on understanding is reached. Exactly how this process is done will vary from student to student."

"Paying attention is not just analyzing carefully; rather, it is a constructive act... What we build has only the dimensions we have given it."

"The attentive synthesis of any particular letter or figure takes an appreciable time, of the order of 100ms...If a whole row of letters is to be identified, they must be synthesized one at a time... To "identify" generally means to name, and hence to synthesize not only a visual object but a linguistic-auditory one... Hence the span of apprehension is limited to what can be synthesized, and then verbally stored."

"The perseverating image, or as Neisser (1967) termed it, icon, has generated considerable interest, but an equally if not more interesting characteristic of this experimental technique is the means by which attention can be selectively directed in a matter of milliseconds to the relevant stimulus item."

"To cope with this difficulty [of limited capacity], even a mechanical recognition system must have some way to select portions of the incoming information for detailed analysis."

"To deal with the whole visual input at once, and make discriminations based on any combination of features in the field, would require too large a brain, or too much "previous experience" to be plausible."

"Attention is not a mysterious concentration of psychic energy; it is simply an allotment of analyzing mechanisms to a limited region of the field. To pay attention to a figure is to make certain analyses of, or certain constructions in, the corresponding part of the icon."

"Ulrich Neisser's... book Cognitive Psychology did much to ignite the so-called cognitive revolution."

"If we allow several figures to appear at once, the number of possible input configurations is so very large that a wholly parallel mechanism, giving a different output for each of them, is inconceivable."

"Given such a sweeping definition, it is apparent that cognition is involved in everything a human being might possibly do; that every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive phenomenon. But although cognitive psychology is concerned with all human activity rather than some fraction of it, the concern is from a particular point of view. Other viewpoints are equally legitimate and necessary. Dynamic psychology, which begins with motives rather than with sensory input, is a case in point. Instead of asking how a man's actions and experiences result from what he saw, remembered, or believed, the dynamic psychologist asks how they follow from the subject's goals, needs, or instincts."

"It is hard to define something one knows little about"

"Cognitive processes surely exist, so it can hardly be unscientific to study them."

"Physics seems to have done reasonably well in studying electrons, although there is not to this day a precise definition of this term."

"The principal way that cognitive science can contribute to epistemology, I claim, is to identify basic belief-forming, or problem-solving processes. Once identified, these processes would be examined by primary epistemology according to the evaluative dimensions and standards adduced in Part I."

"Mr. Magoo Rule: Text and graphics must be easily distinguished and recognized. Don ́t make your audience members feel like the vision challenged Mr. Magoo—viewers of an electronic slideshow should not risk eyestrain!"

"Resist the temptation to use special effects. Think about science fiction movies with lots of special effects: If you notice that special effects are special effects, they will fail."

"The fact that the span of apprehension averages only four or five... probably results from the high rate of encoding. In a tachistoscopic experiment the subject must read the fading icon as rapidly as possible."

"During the late 1970s and early 1980s there was vigorous debate about the nature of visual mental imagery. One position (championed primarily by Pylyshyn, 1973, 1981) held that representations that underlie the experience of mental imagery are the same type as those used in language; the other position (which my colleagues and I supported, e.g., Kosslyn, 1980, 1994) held that these representations serve to depict, not describe, objects. The debate evolved over time... but always centred on the nature of the internal representations that underlie the experience of visualisation."

"These organizational processes result in our perceptions being structured into units corresponding to objects and properties of objects. It is these larger units that may be stored and later assembled into images that are experienced as quasi-pictorial, spatial entities resembling those evoked during perception itself.... It is erroneous to equate image representations with mental photographs, since this would overlook the fact that images are composed from highly processed perceptual encodings."

"We must begin by distinguishing between visual mental imagery and visual perception: Visual perception occurs while a stimulus is being viewed, and includes functions such as visual recognition (i.e., registering that a stimulus is familiar) and identification (i.e., recalling the name, context, or other information associated with the object). Two types of mechanisms are used in visual perception: “bottom-up” mechanisms are driven by the input from the eyes; in contrast, “top-down” mechanisms make use of stored information (such as knowledge, belief, expectations, and goals). Visual mental imagery is a set of representations that gives rise to the experience of viewing a stimulus in the absence of appropriate sensory input. In this case, information in memory underlies the internal events that produce the experience. Unlike afterimages, mental images are relatively prolonged."

"Like pictures, images seem to depict information about interval spatial extents. The scanning experiments support the claim that portions of images depict corresponding portions of the represented objects, and that the spatial relations between portions of the image index the spatial relations between the corresponding portions of the imaged objects."

"But because of the way in which depictions represent, there is a correspondence between parts and spatial relations of the representation and those of the object; this structural mapping, which confers a type of resemblance, underlies the way images convey specific content. In this respect images are like pictures. Unlike words and symbols, depictions are not arbitrarily paired with what they represent."

"Primitive humans responded to all of their emotional experiences in terms of myths, and it is this tendency toward myth making that is registered in the collective unconscious and passed on to future generations. What we inherit, then, is the tendency to reexperience some manifestation of these primordial myths as we encounter events that have been associated with those myths for eons. Each archetype can be viewed as an inherited tendency to respond emotionally and mythologically to certain kinds of experience—for example, when a child, a mother, a lover, a nightmare, a death, a birth, an earthquake, or a stranger is encountered."

"Even if it were clear what was meant, this sort of treatment would seem closer to describing what is taking place than to explaining it. I do not want to deny the value of describing a phenomenon; rich descriptions facilitate theorizing, and there is no more astute observer than Piaget. But in my view explanations of cognitive phenomena should specify the ways in which functional capacities operate. Piaget and Inhelder’s account is more on the level of intentionality, and hence is open to multiple interpretations at the level of the function of the brain. The do not specify how interiorized imitation operates, nor have they specified the format or content of the image. This level of discourse will never produce process adequacy, and hence seems of limited value."