Chapter 12 - Perceptions of control theory in industrial-organizational psychology: disturbances and counter-disturbances

Abstract

The history of perceptual control theory's growing influence in the field of Industrial-Organizational Psychology is described. This history began in the early 1980's and included mostly conceptual work that described how control theory concepts might be used to understand applied phenomena. Both conceptual and empirical work on control theory ideas continued throughout the 1990's despite a substantial backlash against the theory by prominent scholars in the field. However, it was conceptual and empirical work in the 21st century that defined its potential integrative value and its theoretical rigor. Moreover, research regarding self-efficacy demonstrated how informal theories of human behavior might be better understood from a control theory perspective. Much of the current work with perceptual control theory involves the construction and testing of computational models that represent the links among perceptual, learning, and thinking modes of self-regulation and control.