Department 12: Everything I-O Psych
How to Explain What We Do, Psychological Richness, AI Teammates, and Farewell to Schmidt
Sevelyn Crosby, on her inspiration for writing My Mommy is an Organizational Psychologist:
…what spurred this book was my sister, Carmen. She, at the time, was working at an after school program for elementary school students. And I happened to come visit her on career day and she asked me to stand up in front of the kids and describe what I do for a living.
And at that moment, I could barely explain to her or my parents or my friends what I did, so I certainly was not up for the challenge of standing up in front of a group of seven year-olds and trying to explain.
I ended up leaving there, and, I’m not exaggerating, for weeks, it bothered me that I didn’t try. So I thought, what could I have done? What examples might I have given them? And I started thinking about what I would actually say and do if I could go back in time.
The book can be purchased here. The interview with Sevelyn and Amelia Do can be heard here.
Hedonism is feeling good.
Eudaimonianism is fulfilling your potential as a human.
And introducing, hot off the academic presses: psychological richness, a life characterized by a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences.
Okay people, you read the summary. Now get out there and write some papers about how psychological richness mediates the effect of transformational leadership on, I don’t know, sense of calling…in an MTurk sample of Uber drivers.
Oishi and Westgate’s paper is worth a look, if for no other reason than to marvel at that Nietzschen title. They could be on to something.
The New York Times asks, If You Never Met Your Co-Workers in Person, Did You Even Work There?
Spoiler: The answer is yes.
But go ahead and read the article anyway. It’s trying its very best to describe a phenomenon that may end up being more than just a few anecdotes collected for a news article.
What else can one do with an I-O psych degree?
In this study, AI is being presented as a member of a team.
Wait, I haven’t gotten to the weird part yet.
They’re looking into trust between the humans and their AI teammates.
No word yet on whether or not the AI will attend teambuilding day at the ropes course.
Farewell to Frank Leo Schmidt. (Yes, that Schmidt. And that Schmidt. Same guy.)