Introduction to Organization and Work Psychology I

1. Introduction to Organization and Work Psychology I Adam Tarnowski

2. Reading: • Bourne, Yaroush (2003) Stress and cognition. • http://psych.colorado.edu/~lbourne/StressCognition.pdf • Exam: • Multiple-choice test

3. Contact Information Office hours: room 206 Tuesdays and Wensdays 12:00 to 14:00 (it is recommended to appoint via email) Phone (22) 5549 777 Mail adam.tarnowski@psych.uw.edu.pl Website: www.psychologia.pl/adamtarnowski

4. Topics Introduction- definitions, methods and topics in work psychology. Legal aspects of work psychology. Human possibilities and limitations- cognitive models of information acquiring and processing. Workplace environment- physical and social stressors Human error. Accident analyses. Fatigue and shift work. Personnel selection – requirements analyze, skills and competencies testing. Cognitive ergonomics- designing for humans. Teamwork Test.

5. Work psychology and law There are some situations in polish law system, when psychological evaluation is mandatory: - Traffic Psychology - Industrial Psychology - Military/explosives production There are rules regulating standards of psychologists requirements and licencing, test methods and documentation standards

6. Traffic Psychology Traffic psychology investigates human behaviour in road, air, rail and sea transport. - Asessing fitnes to drive - Vehicle ergonomics - Accident investigation - social behaviour of road users

7. Psychological evaluation in Traffic Psychology Evaluation is obligatory for professional drivers, accident perpetrators (in future also victims), drivers prosecuted for drunk driving and frequent traffic rules breakers. Psychologists have to complete MA in psychology and also postgraduate studies. Methods are not specified, but intelect, personality and psychomotor performance shall be asessed. Documentation is well defined by Ministry of health.

8. Industrialpsychology Industrialpsychologyissubdisciplineinvestigatinghuman- machinerelation. IP includes - topicsconcerningselection and placement (adjustingpeople to workplace) - ergonomics (adjustingworkplace to humanpossibilities and limitations)

9. Industrial Psychology Evaluation is mandatory for workers employed in positions demanding high psychomotor performance, especially: - Working on heights - Working with forklift Psychological asessment is a part of ocupational medicine doctor evaluation. There are no specific standarts for psychologists, but documentation is well defined. The Voivodian Centres of Occupational Medicine provides supervision over psychological laboratories.

10. Military and explosives production The intelect, pesronality and socialadjustmentshall be takeintoconsideration- but methodsare not defined. Psychologistsarecertified by Police- obligatoryis to: - have a MA degree in psychology, - completespecialcourse and pass the exam - haveatleast 5 yearsprofessionalpractice Psychologists with thiscertificateareallowed to evaluatealsojudges and prosecutors, and peopleattempting to havepersonalgun

11. Safety guards Licencedsafeetyguardshave by defaultpermission for useshotguns in theirwork. Thus, the psychologicalevaluationhas to be verycerefull- itis a question of „professionalgunlicence”.

12. Appealation Everysubject, whofeels not satisfied with psychologicalstatementcanappeal and has the right to supervisoryevaluation. The finalresult of appealationisdefinitive. Not onlyinvestigatedsubjectshavethisright, but alsoinstitutionwhichdirectedhim to psychologist. Veryfrequentis, for example, appealig by Police, whentheyrealizethatsociallypooradapted person hasbeen no contraindications in psychologicalstatement.

13. Non-mandatorypsychologicalaessment • Many organisations are interested in selection the best workers, especially into a position requiring skills and responsibility, not only pilots or air traffic controllers, but also office and industry workers, when their tasks are requiring eg. • continuous attention • Analyticalskills • Stressresiliency • conscentiousness

14. Emploeedevelopement

15. Predispositions and competency

16. Human possibilities and limitations

17. Overview - Automation and control - Situational awareness - Perception - Working memory - Multitasking abilities

18. SupervisoryAttention System (Normann & Shallicemodel) SAS activateswhensituation: - demandsdecisonmaking - demandsnew, unlearnedreaction - demandsnewskills - demands error correction - becomesdangerous and stresfull

19. A videoclip Is pilot's behaviour automated or controlled?

20. Situational awareness Situationalawarenessis a dynamic model of subject's environment Elements of situationawarenessare: - Perception - Understanding Anticipation

21. Information processing and the situationalawareness Action Effect in environment Feedback: positive Feedback:negative Automation

22. Situational awareness Situationalawarenessincludes data on - Physical environment - Task status - Staff (tasks, workload, functions and resources) - Equipement Situationalawarenessis a goodtheory to analyze of work - Aircrew - Drivers - Medicalteams - Anyothertaskgroups

23. Situational awareness of the team Theory covers not only problems of individual orientation. It shall be also analysed on a level of the team: - Specialised knowledge - Information from particular perspectives - Personal resources and functions Team situational awareness is not a simple summary of members knowledge. It depends on - Management and leadership - Communication

24. Visual illusions

25. Visual illusions in aviation

26. Somatogravitationalillusions

27. Identifying objects the particular objects are binding into „streams” - when performing common action - when perceiving as having a common intention.

28. Information processing: working memory Slave susytems are responsible for storing and processing data Cental Executive manages the system and supports memory operations. Central Executive Visuospatial sketch pad Episodic buffer Phonological loop Visual LTM Verbal LTM Episodic LTM

29. Prospective memory „remembering to remember”: Working memory structure responsible for task planning and keeping information nescessary to completeit. There is no essential difference between Prospective Memory and conscientiousness. So, the difference between „personality” and „cognitive architecture” is only conventional.

30. Decisionmaking • Identifyingdecisionoptions • Information seeking • Gathering and processing of the information • Usefullness (values) of the options • Successprobabilityestimation • Making and implementing the decision • Evaluating the decision

31. Risk management

32. Risk management rules 1. Do not accept unnescessary risk 2. You can accept risk when benefits outweigh the costs. 3. Making of risky decisions should take place at an appropriate level. 4. Anticipate and manage risk by planning.

33. Decisionmaking- summary

34. Workplace environment: physical and social stressors

35. Overview What the stressreallyis? stressreaction Stress and performance Physicalstresors: Temperature, noise, vibrations Socialstressors Stresscoping Stressoutcomes- burnoutsyndrome, WorkRelatedStressDisorder, PTSD

36. Stress reaction and chronic stress Whensomethingunexpectedhappens, the organismmobilizes to fightorflee. We canfeelit as the unpleasantreaction, but sometimesalso as positivemobilisation. We callitactualstress. Whenthisstateprolonges for a longtime, the mobilisationresponsebecomesour habit. It maylead to psychologicalorpsychosomaticaldisorder. We cancallit the chronicstresssyndrome. The most commonchronicstresssymptomsarefeeling of strain and pressure, feeling of anxiety and beingoverwhelmed, overallirritability, feeling of insecure, nervousness, socialwithdrawal, loss of appetite, depression, panicattacks, exhaustion, high orlowbloodpressure, skin problems, insomnia, lack of sexualdesire, migraine, gastralproblems. Psychologicalsymptoms- workingmamory and attentiondisturbances.

37. Actual Stress In firstphase the body isbeingmobilised for action. The release of hormonal and biochemicalresourcesallows for betterfunctioning (physical and cognitive). Second phaseis a period of acting with increased performance. Somecognitiveproblemsmayappearanyway: - Cognitivetunneling (impairedperipheralperception) - Bolstering (Tendency to stick to one decision, neglect of informationincompatibile with current plan) Concretethinking (utility of theoreticalknowledgeislimited) Third phase- exhausting. Performance below the baseline

38. Transactionalstresstheory (Lazarus & Folkman) The source of stressis the interaction, not the objectivecharacteristics of the individual and the task Primaryevaluation: Subjectidentifiessituation as insignificant favorable threatening loss Danger challenge Secondary Evaluation: Possibility of the coping.

39. Stress and performance

40. Stress and performance (Hardy's model) When cognitive anxiety (connected with social pressure) is high, the performance catastrophically breaks down.

41. Physical stressors: heat High temperatures will reduce the level of implementation of the tasks that require vigilance and perseverance. The negative effects of heat stress impairs more relatively easy and monotonous than difficult task. Probably difficult task stimulates more intensivelly what allows to overcome the discomfort and maintain high efficiency. One can be adapted to operate at high temperature, but after some time, depending on the individual characteristics, cognitive and motor performance is weakened . Temperature of 32 degrees Celsius is a limit beyond which human performance is considerably reduced (Johnson, Kobrick 2001).

42. Emotional aspects Another effect of thermal stress on human activity is increasing irritability and aggression in response to it. There has been a significantly greater number of violent crimes in high temperatures. Climatic factors explain the higher percentage of aggressive and criminal behavior than economic. Dysphoria, even if it is not expressed in anti-social behavior has an impact on the focus of attention and the deterioration of psychomotor skills.

43. Low temperature Rapid exposure to low temperature improves human cognitive functioning. However, if the deep temperature of the body is low, (about 2-4 degrees) mental capacity decreases. The decline in performance is small for simple tasks, the influence of cold on complex tasks is stronger. The subjective feeling of performance deterioration is much higher than the results of objective tests.

44. Noise Kjellberg, Landstroem, Tesarz (1996): study of workers exposed to various noise (offices and factories) Irritability (emotional factor) is proportional to the noise level, noise subjectively perceived need, gender, and sensory sensitivity. Irritating noise source is a machine used by others. Deconcentration (cognitive/executive factor) is proportional to the sense of control over noise and its predictability. The most distracting are sound of loud talking and the phone. Hygge and Knez (2001) studied the effect of the loud ventilation Tasks requiring attention under the influence of noise were made faster, but with more errors

45. Social stressors: Leadership Authoritaive leadership may be source of stress (feeling of overhelming of tasks, total control, lack of self-actualisation possibility) Free- reign style (lack of leadership) is also stressfull (overhelming of responsibility, chaos and lack of support) The leadership style shall be supportive and adequate to the task and emploee skills/knowledge.

46. Social stressorsrs: the task Overhelming of the task- too much work, lack of support, lack of coordination, pressure for the effect. Task deprivation can be sometimes even more stressfull. Situation, when emploee had to be at worplace but no tasks are assigned to him can be form of bullying.

47. Other social stressors sexism discrimination impropermotivation threat of losing a job

48. Stress coping styles - Task oriented - Emotions oriented - Avoidance Substitute activity Social orientation Stress is not always wrong: Stress management

49. Outcomes of chronic stress Burnoutsyndrome Exhaution- emotionalproblems, poormood and anhedonia Cinicism- socialfunctioningimpairment. Lack of efficacy and jobsatisfaction Workrelatedstressdisorder (similar to PTSD) Psychosomaticdisorders

50. Profesionsexposed to PTSD risk • Rescue services (firemen, industry/mineemergency team members), • Medical service • Police and safetyguards • Military • Drivers (roadaccidentvictims)