Psychology

"The Constitution favors no racial group, no political or social group."

"Administration is both social engineering and applied psychology. It is apparatus and mechanics, incentives and human nature. Let no one think it is merely the former. Nowhere is the need for psychology greater than in the organization, direction, and inspiration of men working in large groups. Outstanding administrative results are produced by spirit, morale, atmosphere; these, in turn, are the product of psychological mainsprings and invigorating incentives. As Benjamin Lippincott has recognized, both governmental and business administration resolve fundamentally into the role played by effective incentives."

"War has given applied psychology a tremendous impulse. This will, on the whole, do good, for psychology, which is the largest and last of the sciences, must not try to be too pure."

"When there is a range of opinion in the group, communications tend to be directed towards those members whose opinions are at the extremes of the range."

"We find that audiences believe moral commitments should not be broken, and thus that they deride as hypocritical leaders who claim a moral commitment and later change their views. Moreover, they view them as less effective and less worthy of support."

"We addressed the question of whether behaviors in school have any long-lasting effects for one‘s later life. Specifically, we investigated the role of being a responsible student, interest in school, writing skills, and reading skills in predicting educational attainment, occupational prestige, and income 11 years... and 50 years... after high school... We found that student characteristics and behaviors in adolescence predicted later educational and occupational success above and beyond parental socioeconomic status, IQ, and broad personality traits. Having higher interest in school was related to higher educational attainment at years 11 and 50, higher occupational prestige at year 11, and higher income at year 50. Higher levels of being a responsible student were related to higher educational attainment and higher occupational prestige at years 11 and 50."

"Research by a team of Canadian psychologists recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that all leaders can actually be divided into two types. The research was built on a simple observation: There are two ways to get ahead. You can dominate people by making them fear you or you can win their loyalty with your intelligence and kindness. The first type of leader tended to adopt a stereotypical "power pose"...Essentially, they intimidate people into following them...Instead of looking down with a scowl, the other type of leader looked up with a smile. These folks were also seen as leaders, but they were viewed as caring and competent rather than dominating. They gained followers through prestige, which they developed by demonstrating their expertise and helping people."

"Glucose is the main energy fuel supporting the brain's functions and the ingestion of even small doses can improve cognitive functioning... The authors conclude that older adults' preference for positive information is so potent that it can guide the way energy resources are used to support goals relating to positivity. The study is the first to demonstrate that a simple dietary intervention — providing a small dose of glucose — can help older adults retain their positivity even when faced with challenging task conditions."

"Awe arises in evanescent experiences. Looking up at the starry expanse of the night sky. Gazing out across the blue vastness of the ocean. Feeling amazed at the birth and development of a child. Protesting at a political rally or watching a favorite sports team live. Many of the experiences people cherish most are triggers of the emotion we focused on here — awe. Our investigation indicates that awe, although often fleeting and hard to describe, serves a vital social function. By diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, awe may encourage people to forego strict self-interest to improve the welfare of others."

"In summary, the present research revealed both positive and negative aspects of parents’ aspiration for their children’s academic performance. Although parental aspiration is an important vehicle through which children’s academic potential can be realized, excessive parental aspiration can be poisonous... Excessive parental control or parental over involvement could be factors that may mediate the negative relation between parental overaspiration and children’s achievement."

"From an evolutionary perspective, the emotional rewards that people experience when they help others may serve as a proximate mechanism that evolved to facilitate prosocial behavior, which may have carried short-term costs but long-term benefits for survival over human evolutionary history. The robustness of this mechanism is supported by our finding that people experience emotional benefits from sharing their financial resources with others not only in countries where such resources are plentiful, but also in impoverished countries where scarcity might seem to limit the possibilities to reap the gains from giving to others... In highlighting the potential universality of emotional benefits stemming from prosocial spending, the present research adds to the chorus of recent interdisciplinary findings documenting the importance of generosity for human well-being."

"Most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function."

"Social organizations are flagrantly open systems in that the input of energies and the conversion of output into further energy input consists of transactions between the organization and its environment."

"Managers construct, rearrange, single out, and demolish many “objective” features of their surroundings. When people act they unrandomize variables, insert vestiges of orderliness, and literally create their own constraints."

"How do people cope when they feel uninformed or unable to understand important social issues, such as the environment, energy concerns, or the economy? Do they seek out information, or do they simply ignore the threatening issue at hand? One would intuitively expect that a lack of knowledge would motivate an increased, unbiased search for information, thereby facilitating participation and engagement in these issues— especially when they are consequential, pressing, and self-relevant. However, there appears to be a discrepancy between the importance/self-relevance of social issues and people’s willingness to engage with and learn about them... Ignorance—as a function of the system justifying tendencies it may activate—may, ironically, breed more ignorance. In the contexts of energy, environmental, and economic issues, the authors present 5 studies that (a) provide evidence for this specific psychological chain...and... illustrate the unfortunate consequences of this process for individual action in those contexts that may need it most."

"A burgeoning literature has begun to establish the dynamic relationship between people and the external systems (i.e., governments, institutions) within which they operate... This literature, although diverse, paints a picture of a social animal who acts not like a dispassionate observer and judge of her or his governmental systems, or one who relies on the government and other institutional systems solely for the provision of tangible, physical goods (e.g., safety, roads, water), but of someone who also leans on the government and other organizations to cope with various psychological needs—needs traditionally thought to be handled by the individual alone or, at the very most, via the individual’s connections to others... It has become clear that people turn to their external systems to regulate a number of relational, existential, and epistemic threats... We leveraged this past research to develop a novel explanation for how people’s tendency to trust in their social systems, and outsource their worries and fears to these systems, can lead to the propagation of ignorance in the context of important social issues."

"These findings provide the first experimental evidence that exposure to God influences goal pursuit and suggest that the ever-present cultural reminders of God can be both burden and benefit for self-regulation."

"When one considers the ubiquity of religious constructs in everyday life and the fact that our findings do not appear to be restricted to the religiously devout, the implications of the current findings are far reaching. From popular and classic works of fiction, to the news media, to everyday conversation, the social world is replete with mentions of God. The current findings suggest that this exposure may have broad societal consequences for fundamental psychological processes of self-regulation, which in turn underlie much of health, happiness, and human productivity."

"Each sent pressure can be regarded as arousing in the focal person a psychological force of some magnitude and direction. Such forces will be called role forces. This is not to say that these motivational role forces are identical in magnitude and direction with the role pressures which evoked them. Especially when role pressures are seen as illegitimate or coercive, they may arouse strong resistance forces which lead to outcomes different from or even opposite to the expected behavior. Pressures to increase production rates sometimes result in slowdowns. Moreover, every person is subject to a variety of psychological forces in addition to those stimulated by pressures from his role set in the work situation. Role pressures are thus only a partial determinant of behavior on the job. In addition, to the motivational forces aroused by role pressures, there are important internal sources of motivation for role performance. One of these stems from the intrinsic satisfaction derived from the content of the role."

"Research reveal that managers achieving better performance (i.e., greater productivity, higher earnings, lower costs, etc. ) differ in leadership principles and practices from those achieving poorer performance."

"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."

"As tasks become more varied and require greater training and skill, the relationship (between job attitudes and performance) appears to change progressively from the negative to positive."

"The power to distinguish between person and performance and to communicate intrinsic worth flows naturally out of our own sense of intrinsic worth."

"[Each person] is a member of one or more functioning workgroups that have a high degree of group loyalty, effective skills of interaction and high performance goals."

"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."

"In this line of thought Campbell (1993) developed an influential model containing eight dimensions to measure job performance (Jex 2002 pp. 90-92):"

"The higher we go, the ups and downs at the lower level would gradually fade. If what we do is to be worth while and if we are to get job satisfaction, we have to study more and work hard. The more we work, the stronger the profession would become and grow."

"A threshold competency is a person's generic knowledge, motive, trait, self image, social role, or skill which is essential to performing a job, but is not causally related to superior job performance."

"Job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are not the obverse of each other... The opposite of job satisfaction would not be job dissatisfaction, but rather would be no job satisfaction. Similarly, the opposite of job dissatisfaction is no job dissatisfaction, not satisfaction with one's job."

"There is a great variety of measures of job attitudes. Basically, however, the identification of job attitudes has been done in three ways. In the first of these the worker is asked to express his "job satisfaction" directly by answering questions that investigate his over-all attitude toward his job, whether he likes or dislikes it."

"Every piece of data suggests that workplaces are in dire shape and there is low levels of trust in leaders. For instance, data on employee engagement from Gallup show that worldwide only about 13% of employees report being engaged with their work, and in the U.S., the number is barely higher at 20%. Job satisfaction has declined almost linearly since 1987 to the present. The Edelman Trust index indicates that the public at large has low trust in leaders, while other surveys show that employees do not expect their own leaders to make ethical decisions or to consistently tell them the truth about difficult situations."

"This study examines two alternative views—universal and contingency—of the human resources (HR)-performance relationship in manufacturing settings. Results from a survey of 97 plants primarily support a contingency approach to human resource management (HRM). An HR system focused on human capital enhancement was directly related to multiple dimensions of operational performance (i.e., employee productivity, machine efficiency, and customer alignment), but subsequent analysis revealed that this main effect was predominately the result of linking human-capital-enhancing HR systems with a quality manufacturing strategy. Other manufacturing strategies also moderated the HR-performance relationship."

"Research indicates that employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company."

"I defined personal engagement as the harnessing of organisation members' selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances."

"The ultimate measurement is effectiveness, not efficiency."

"Simon (1950, 1952-3, 1952) was a leading proponent for the creation of “organization theory”, which he imagined as including scientific management, industrial engineering, industrial psychology, the psychology of small groups, human-resources management, and strategy."

"The idea of human resource management has become topical and controversial. The term suggests that people in any organization are an asset to be upgraded and full utilized rather than merely a variable cost to be minimized. This in turn implies that the way in which people are managed is a matter of crucial strategic concern."

"Two of the most widely adopted models of human resource management are the hard and soft versions. These are based on opposing views of human nature and managerial control strategies. The hard model is based on notions of tight strategic control, and an economic model of man according to Theory X, while the soft model is based on control through commitment and Theory Y. We argue that because these assumptions are so divergent, they cannot both properly be incorporated within a single model of human resource management."

"[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."

"The stress on 'human resources' as an organizational asset goes back at least to Drucker (1954). This was elaborated in the theory of 'human capital' by Schultz (1963) who was concerned to describe the benefits of education as a 'production good' enhancing the economic resources of society, and by others like Becker (1964) who argued for the benefits to economic growth of a well-trained workforce. While labour market segmentation theory developed in reaction (stressing institutional processes in labour market formation), human asset accounting in the 1970s applied the capital theory to quantifying investments in people by the organization (Flamholtz, 1974). This was embraced by some (for example, Likert, 1967) as a way of encouraging humane employment policies, less geared to the short-term (although others saw in it the rule of accountants)."

"Culture is the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others."

"The subject of human resource management (HRM) and its development has been much contested in the literature. Most of the relevant theories originated in the United States of America. There is in the literature no distinctly “European” approach to HRM and, indeed, our knowledge of comparative HRM practices in different European states is limited."

"Human resource management (HRM) developed initially from work in the United States of America in the 1960s and 1970s and since the mid 1980s has been an ever more visible feature of the academic literature, of consultancy services and of organisational terminology; particularly in the USA and Great Britain."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I can charge a man's battery, and then recharge it, and recharge it again. But it is only when he has his own generator that we can talk about motivation. He then needs no outside stimulation. He wants to do it."

"An essential part of the awakening is the recognition of the unawakened you, the ego as it thinks, speaks and acts, as well as the recognition of the collectively conditioned mental processes that perpetuate the unawakened state. That is why this book shows the main aspects of the ego and how they operate in the individual as well as in the collective. This is important for two related reasons: The first is that unless you know the basic mechanics behind the workings of the ego, you won’t recognize it, and it will trick you into identifying with it again and again."

"No scientist has yet provided an acceptable definition of "mind" or "mental" that reveals the character of "unconscious mental processes," and no physicist a lucid definition of "elementary particles" that shows how they can appear or disappear, and why there are so many."

"If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent"