Chad’s Blog-O-Rama

When the subject of education comes up I often find myself explaining what exactly it is that my MA degree is in: Industrial Organizational Psychology or I/O Psych for short.

Some times I say its the Psychology version of an MBA (a bit of a stretch), other times I say its workplace psychology, or maybe I say its applying the principles of Psychology to the workplace, then give some B.F. Skinner based examples.

The Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology (SIOP - pronounced “syop”) gives its members brochures to hand out when asked what I/O is. http://www.siop.org/visibilitybrochure/siopbrochure.aspx  My favorite explanation below:

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists contribute to an organizations success by improving the performance and well-being of its people. An I-O psychologist researches and identifies how behaviors and attitudes can be improved through hiring practices, training programs, and feedback systems.

I am embarrassed to say that it took until my senior year of college to realize that the “I” and the “O” doesn’t just mean that we will work for Industries and Organizations but have much deeper meanings.

Industrial Psychology loosely defined is the hard numbers side that is selection, productivity, statistics, and things like that.

On the other hand…

Organization Psychology is the mushy stuff. Motivation, teambuilding, change management, that sort of thing.

The idea is that a degree in I/O Psych gives you a well rounded view that will provide that tools needed to change the world…. or at least improve performance in an organization.

I am going to the SIOP conference next week and to be honest I am looking forward to being around people who will not respond to my explanation of what by saying “well you should come to my work there are lots of crazy people!”