All questions of Developing Psychological Skills for Humanities/Arts Exam

Some of the most relevant factors governing how we react to potentially stressful situations are:

Egocentricity, group polarization and production-blocking are three examples of factors that contribute to poor group decision-making. The remaining terms are not used to refer to the consequences of egocentricity, group polarization and production-blocking.

Training is a learning process structured in a systematic fashion and designed to raise the performance level of an employee (Goldstein, 1991; Tannenbaum & Yukl, 1992). With the marked change in work environments over the last quarter of the twentieth century has come an urgent need to develop and maintain staff skills through continuous training. Furthermore, with the expanded use of new technology (and information technology in particular) most people at work need continual training to update their skills (Ashton & Felstead, 1995; Pfeffer, 1998; Tharenou & Burke, 2002). Yet the approach to training in many organizations is often haphazard and reactive. Psychologists have much to offer organizations in relation to how training can best be used to achieve a fit between the individual and his job.

Power, according to French and Raven (1959), derives from the following five sources:

Research from the 1930s to the present day has consistently shown that the unemployed have poorer mental health than comparable groups of employed people. Unemployed people have worse profiles on measures of anxiety, depression, life dissatisfaction, experienced stress, negative self-esteem and hopelessness about the future. They are also more likely to report social isolation and low levels of daily activity. Their physical health is poorer, and they are more likely to attempt and commit suicide (Fryer, 1992; Warr, 1987).
Striking, too, is the fact that the psychological effects of unemployment extend to the whole family. In a classic study of a whole village affected by unemployment, the effects were shown to spread across the whole community, lowering its spirit and functioning (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld & Zeisel, 1972).

Organizational psychologists have struggled with the concept of leadership since the mid-twentieth century, changing their focus from personality (‘leaders are born, not made’) to environmental factors (‘circumstances determine who emerges as the leader’) and back to personality again (Bass, 1990; Fiedler, 1967; House, 1977. Today, there is a lot of interest in charismatic or transformational leadership. Charismatic leadership represents a leadership style that enables the leader to exercise diffuse and intense influence over the beliefs, values, behaviour and performance of others (House, Spangler & Woyche, 1991).
Charismatic leaders tend to be dominant and self-confident with a need to influence others while believing strongly in their own values. They communicate their goals and visions clearly, and have high expectations of their followers’ performance. The fascination with this kind of leadership is evidenced by the number of books by or about charismatic leaders. Some studies suggest that these leaders inspire effort and satisfaction amongst their employees, resulting in higher productivity.

Organizations can also be described in terms of their cultures, including their values, attitudes and beliefs. Manifestations of culture include: hierarchy; pay levels; job descriptions; informal practices; espoused values and rituals; stories, jokes and jargon; physical environment. The meanings of all these aspects of the organization taken together tell us about its underlying culture (Schein, 1992).
There has been particular interest in how to ‘manage’ organizational culture, and considerable resources have been spent trying to create ‘a service culture’ or ‘an open culture’ or ‘a people culture’, to name but three examples. Organizational psychologists have adopted three approaches to understanding culture (Martin, 1992): integration, differentiation and fragmentation. These differing dimensions suggest that organizational culture is complex and that we can best understand it by adopting a multi-dimensional perspective.

Coercive power is the power to force others into action or inaction by way of threat or punishment. Legitimate power comes from actually being in a position in the hierarchy of imposed authority. Reward power comes from allocating extra tokens or bonuses. Referent power comes from being persuasive and popular. Expert power comes from having access to knowledge and information not available to others.

Work load tests are not an example of a common selection procedure used to make the best matches between people and jobs whereas each of the remaining choices are examples of common selection procedures.

The differentiation perspective describes an organization with a culture that recognizes different interests, views, backgrounds and position of employees, and the different attitudes, working conditions and pay across the different levels of the organization. Integration refers to an organization-wide consensus about the values of the organization, and thus a unified organizational culture across levels of the organization. Fragmentation refers to an organization with an ambiguous culture because it lacks consensus about the meaning, attitudes and values of the organization. Pluralist refers to a view about how organizations should be as opposed to describing the way an organizational culture actually is.

Selection is based on the premise that there are stable individual differences between people, which can be identified, and that these differences have an impact on how effective people are in a particular job (Robertson, 1995). Not surprisingly, psychologists have been at the forefront of developing and using personnel selection methods for some time. One of the aims of selection is to ensure a fit, i.e. a good match, between the person and the organization. Failure to achieve this can not only result in poor job performance, but the well-being of the employee also suffers, and ultimately the employment relationship is likely to end.

This is a real-world example of the negative influence of transformational leadership by which a dominant and self-confident leader can influence the behaviour of subordinates with clear communication, strong commitment to own goals and high expectations of subordinates.
Transactional leadership refers to relationships with followers based on exchanges or bargains. Social roles describe normative attitudes and behaviours expected of people who belong to particular groups. The Hawthorne effect refers to the improved performance of workers based on the attention and interest given to them regarding their work. Formalization refers to written rules and regulations governing activities within an organization.

Hackman and Oldham’s (1976) five contributors to job satisfaction are:

Psychological safety is the shared belief among members of a work team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks within work teams. Team process, team viability, groupthink and team beliefs are not terms used to refer to this type of shared belief within work teams.

One significant problem for women at work is stereotyping: 52 per cent of employed women work in occupational groups in which more than 60 per cent of their co-workers are women, such as clerical and secretarial work, service work and sales. Women are also vastly over-represented in part-time work and pregnancy is still (illegally) treated by some employers as a cause for dismissal. Perhaps most revealing of the pervasive discrimination against women in the workplace is the data on pay: in 2003, women’s average hourly pay was still only 82 per cent of men’s. Although women have increased their representation somewhat in the ranks of executives, they still account for less than 5 per cent of company directors (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2004) in the UK.
One issue, which is much debated, is whether women have different managerial or leadership styles from men. The bulk of the research suggests there are large differences within genders as well as between them, but that women adopt a consistently more democratic and participative style of management than men do (Eagly & Johnson, 1990; Powell, 1993). Some researchers argue that women also have a more ‘transformational’ style, inspiring and encouraging their employees, whereas men tend to use a ‘transactional’ style, punishing and rewarding selectively to achieve the desired task-related behaviours (e.g. Rosener, 1990).

All of the negative psychological effects indicated above have been consistently associated with unemployment in individuals.

The process by which members of a society are taught how to behave and feel by influential members of that society is referred to as socialization. Social roles and normative influence are part of the socialization process. The Hawthorne effect refers to the improved performance of workers based on the attention and interest given to them regarding their work. Role ambiguity refers to employee uncertainty about their job functions and responsibilities.

Socialization is the process by which members of a society (be it a country, organization or even a family) are taught how to behave and feel by influential members of that society. In the past, theory and research has concentrated on the development of children and adolescents. But more recently it has become clear that we are socialized and resocialized throughout our lives (Wanous, Reichers & Malik, 1984). When employees start work, they learn about their new jobs, the work environment and how they are required to behave – attending meetings on time, dressing according to certain standards, using particular styles of speech.
When employees start work, they learn to align their work values with those of the organization. For example, army recruits are socialized, or indoctrinated, into the ‘army way’, learning not only the rules and regulations but also the values and behaviours that match the army’s distinctive culture. Many commercial organizations emphasize customer service as vital, and require employees to adopt the values, attitudes and behaviours that support such a service strategy.

All of the above continue to constitute significant problems for women in the workforce.