Personality and Intelligence in Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Abstract

The discipline of industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology focuses on understanding human behavior in the context of work. Since the emergence of I/O psychology as a field of scientific inquiry in the United States at the turn of the century, I/O psychologists have been concerned with a wide variety of topics, including personnel selection and placement, job training, task design, worker motivation, organizational influences on work behavior, and procedures for optimizing job performance and worker efficiency. (For reviews of these and other I/O areas, see Dun-nette, 1976; Dunnette & Hough, 1990, 1991, 1992.) From an individual differences perspective, however, two fundamental questions may be proposed to underlie much of I/O theory and research: (a) What roles do cognitive and nonability individual differences play in the determination of job performance? (b) How may individual-difference theories and assessment measures be employed to improve predictions of the fit between an individual and a job?