For questions relating to the application and extension of psychological principles to humans operating within the context of business, industry, and other organizational structures.
6
votes
1answer
53 views
Effect of paper type on evaluation of resumes
I heard about an experiment that have shown an effect of the type of paper a resume was printed on, on the evaluation of the resume. If I remember correctly, resumes printed on heaver paper, or ...
5
votes
0answers
60 views
How long should I work before taking a break?
I'd like to work as effectively as possible for 8-9 hours a day, whether at work or studying.
At some point in completing my major in psych I remember hearing about the importance of taking breaks ...
0
votes
1answer
45 views
How to interpret HLM analyses looking at work group and individual worker effects?
Liden et al (2004, PDF) is an example of a study examining employees in work groups in an organisation. Thus, measures are obtained of both individual workers and of the work groups that they belong ...
4
votes
0answers
16 views
What is the relationship between practice and performance of telephone call centre workers?
I am interested in modelling the relationship between practice and performance both in laboratory tasks and field settings. I was interested in what existing research has examined how the performance ...
2
votes
0answers
26 views
How do the correlations between Big 5 personality change in studies examining “faking bad”?
I have conducted several studies that get participants to complete the IPIP personality test while role play going for a job. A common finding is that the average correlation (i.e., $\bar{r}$ between ...
1
vote
1answer
53 views
Is a safe driving record correlated with any psychometric test scores?
A few years ago I was interviewing for a position with a subdivision of a large company in New York City. One of the things that hit me as odd about this interview was that the recruiter was ...
15
votes
1answer
217 views
Do personality survey responses correlate to the success or failure of minimum wage employees?
I recently watched a friend fill out a personality survey for a minimum wage job. These surveys generally have a few dozen to as many as a couple hundred statements with which the applicant must ...
4
votes
1answer
181 views
Reducing adverse impact, discrimination and unfairness when using psychological assessments for selection purposes
How can we reduce adverse impacts such as bias, discrimination, and unfairness when using cognitive ability tests and personality tests for selection purposes in an international context?
3
votes
0answers
76 views
What positive techniques can be used to motivate individuals resistant to common gamification techniques?
A previous question I asked dealt with Gamification techniques to encourage people to perform online workplace training.
We are hoping that we can introduce some game techniques to lift the ...
13
votes
1answer
173 views
How can I use gamification to encourage people to complete workplace training?
I am looking for ways to improve the likelihood people will perform mundane but required workplace training. I am looking into gamification techniques.
My organisation requires that employees ...
10
votes
1answer
188 views
What are the minimal requirements for successful gamification?
I am very interested in the concept of Gamification, the idea (used here on Stack Exchange) that by making mundane tasks into a game, you can elicit desired behavior from users of software. (For ...
2
votes
1answer
117 views
What do within-subjects studies of job applicant personality test faking say about the covariance between developmental and job applicant scores?
Some studies of faking personality tests in selection and recruitment have used a within-subject design. These studies involve administering a personality test in two conditions. One condition is ...
6
votes
1answer
138 views
Bayesian models of faking in selection and recruitment settings
I'm doing some research looking at applying Bayesian models to faking personality tests in selection and recruitment.
I'm interested to know:
What existing work has applied Bayesian models to ...
6
votes
1answer
65 views
Whether to ask satisfaction and importance questions for each item in a survey?
Job satisfaction and opinion surveys ask respondents to provide ratings on a set of items. One response scale might be a five point rating scale measuring satisfaction (e.g., 5-point strongly ...
8
votes
1answer
145 views
Do ability tests predict maximal more than typical job performance?
I have often read that ability tests are indicative of what people "can do", but that job performance also depends on what people "will do".
For example, Ackerman and Beier (2012) wrote that:
...
8
votes
2answers
128 views
Does self-rated performance predict objective performance over and above other-rated performance?
Context:
I was at a talk today where data was presented where a group of sports people ranked their own performance and everyone else in the group. This enabled self-rated performance to be ...
6
votes
0answers
74 views
What psychological or sociological concepts form the basis of Principled Negotiation?
Although the various forwards mention that organizational behavior and social psychology are two of the fields that form the basis for the techniques taught at Harvard Law School's Negotiation and ...
5
votes
1answer
445 views
Does individual work performance follow a Paretian distribution?
O'Boyle and Aguinis (2012) wrote a paper arguing that individual job performance follows a Paretian distribution rather than a normal distribution (put simply, a very long tail to the right, rather ...
7
votes
1answer
107 views
What is the effect of merely expecting an interruption on performance?
There's a lot of research about how interruptions affect cognitive performance.
Are there any studies that have looked at the effect of merely expecting to be interrupted (withou being actually ...
11
votes
1answer
231 views
What is a validated single-item measure of mood?
Has anyone validated, proposed or tested a single-item state-based positive affect or happiness measure? I am particularly interested in something for tracking mood every day.
8
votes
2answers
236 views
Does Facebook activity predict job performance?
I've seen a little bit of discussion in the media about Facebook being used in selection and recruitment settings.
Assuming an employer can gain access to a person's Facebook profile, have any ...
14
votes
1answer
409 views
Is there experimental support for John Perry's “Theory of Structured Procrastination”?
John Perry's theory of structured procrastination can be summed up as follows:
Some people are inherently predisposed to be procrastinators across a wide range of domains
Such procrastinators are ...
5
votes
1answer
58 views
Accuracy of social judgements of observers watching business meetings
I'm very interested in how people size one another up in social situations and in particular what we key in on when we are making these judgements.
Let's make an imaginary experiment.
I make ...
9
votes
1answer
102 views
What are the considerations for using wide-reaching messages and training over individual-focused efforts for changing behavior?
In most places that I've worked, when some sort of problem arose or corrective action needs to be taken, one of the first responses is to send mass emails at an organization or team level and set up ...
7
votes
1answer
74 views
Does the concept of employee engagement add anything over and above traditional concepts?
The concept of "employee engagement" is popular in organisational consulting
settings. A quick Google for "engagement survey" will yield many results.
However, in some respects the concept often seems ...
7
votes
0answers
78 views
What are the benefits of transformational over transactional leadership?
Transformational leadership is sometimes recommended as a way of motivating and inspiring followers in contrast to more transactional styles of leadership.
There is a large pop-psych literature on ...
17
votes
5answers
652 views
Why do higher incentives lead to lower performance for non-rudimentary tasks?
I have watched a number of times this excellent video where Dan Pink discusses the science of motivation. The video states that the higher incentives, the lower performance for non-rudimentary (not ...
11
votes
2answers
432 views
Game-theory strategies to overcome holdout problem?
The hold-out problem often occurs in debt-restructuring or in urban development.
The hold-out problem is defined where an agent, for example a land developer, must negotiate with many lot owners and ...
9
votes
3answers
63 views
Do safety features cause drivers to engage in more risky behavior than they otherwise would?
It seems to be generally assumed that making cars safer for the occupants will reduce death, injury, and damage from traffic accidents.
What are some examples of significant empirical research on ...
4
votes
4answers
66 views
What is a good book for studying incentives?
I am looking for a book, which gives a broad overview of all the main theories regarding incentives. Using this book, I would like to further my understanding of things like:
Why slot machines ...
23
votes
2answers
295 views
Do students exhibit rational behavior in determining study time?
While I teach some economics classes, I must admit to near complete ignorance on the optimization processes students undertake when studying. We often say that the "best" students are those who earn ...
7
votes
3answers
41 views
How can you limit excessive risk-taking at the institutional level?
Some firms have a compensation structure that encourages risk-taking while insulating employees from the bad consequences of their decisions. This creates the potential for moral hazard.
I started ...
