Deck 16: Exploring the Role of Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Question 1

Which of the following is generally the poorest predictor of future job performance?

A) aptitude tests
B) job knowledge tests
C) simulated job performance tests
D) evaluations from informal interviews

Answer 1

evaluations from informal interviews

Question 2

Dr.Wolfson develops assessment tools for use by company supervisors to make decisions about job promotions.His work best illustrates that of a(n)________ psychologist.

A) clinical
B) personnel
C) organizational
D) human factors

Answer 2

personnel

Question 3

Those who view their work as a fulfilling and socially useful activity are said to view work as a

A) job.
B) calling.
C) career.
D) contract.

Answer 3

calling.

Question 4

Danielle,an applicant for a position in corporate financial accounting,was so animated and enthusiastic in her conversations with company officials that they decided to hire her without carefully checking her résumé and past work accomplishments.The company officials should most clearly be informed about

A) human factors psychology.
B) social leadership.
C) the interviewer illusion.
D) the experience of flow.

Question 5

A performance evaluation program revealed that the most effective salespeople in a large company are sincere and energetic in their work.This led the company's psychological consultants to develop a simulation that would assess the extent to which applicants for company sales positions communicate in a forthright and animated manner.This most clearly illustrates the consultants' commitment to

A) structured interviews.
B) human factors psychology.
C) a strengths-based selection system.
D) 360-degree feedback.

Question 6

Matt is a student who becomes so fully absorbed in his course studies that he completely loses awareness of how long he has been working.Matt's experience best illustrates

A) 360-degree feedback.
B) task leadership.
C) human factors psychology.
D) flow.

Question 7

Improving employee morale and business profitability by developing a new chain of command between subdivisions of a large manufacturing company best illustrates the work of a

A) personnel psychologist.
B) human factors psychologist.
C) organizational psychologist.
D) clinical psychologist.

Question 8

A high level of satisfaction with one's work is most likely to be reported by those who frequently experience

A) flow.
B) implementation intentions.
C) unstructured interviews.
D) 360-degree feedback.

Question 9

Human factors psychology is a distinct field that is allied with

A) clinical psychology.
B) personnel psychology.
C) social psychology.
D) industrial-organizational psychology.

Question 10

Dr.Ford assesses people's personalities and interests and then alerts them to vocations with a good person-environment fit.His specialty is

A) worker productivity.
B) designing optimum worker environments.
C) career counseling.
D) developing system technologies.

Question 11

Which profession is most likely to be concerned with the effect of supervisors' management styles on worker motivation and productivity?

A) developmental psychology
B) social psychology
C) industrial-organizational psychology
D) cognitive psychology

Question 12

A person who spends far more time sharpening existing skills than correcting existing weaknesses

A) is most likely a satisfied and successful employee.
B) views his or her work as a job.
C) has a directive rather than a democratic leadership style.
D) is motivated more by external rewards than by internal rewards.

Question 13

Personnel psychologists are most likely to be involved in

A) matching people's strengths with specific job assignments.
B) modifying work environments to improve employee engagement.
C) contributing to the design of user-friendly industrial machines.
D) assessing the effect of supervisors' management styles on business productivity.

Question 14

Matching people with existing jobs is to ________ psychology as modifying jobs and supervision is to ________ psychology.

A) human factors;organizational
B) organizational;human factors
C) personnel;organizational
D) organizational;personnel

Question 15

Structured interviews have more ________ than unstructured interviews.

A) democratic style
B) leniency errors
C) predictive accuracy
D) 360-degree feedback

Question 16

Designing aircraft instrument displays so pilots can easily and accurately monitor flight data would be of most direct interest to

A) personnel psychology.
B) organizational psychology.
C) human factors psychology.
D) clinical psychology.

Question 17

Those who view their work as a calling report ________ work satisfaction than those who view their work as a job and ________ work satisfaction than those who view their work as a career.

A) more;less
B) less;more
C) more;more
D) less;less

Question 18

A psychological consultant develops a test that assesses the extent to which applicants for company sales positions communicate in an honest and animated manner.The consultant's work best illustrates that of a(n)

A) clinical psychologist.
B) human factors psychologist.
C) organizational psychologist.
D) personnel psychologist.

Question 19

Interviewers are disposed to judge job applicants more favorably when informed that the applicants

A) are applying for their very first career position.
B) have been prescreened by other company personnel.
C) are nervous and worried about making a good impression.
D) have a strong desire to work hard if paid well.

Question 20

Work is LEAST likely to be experienced as a positive and fulfilling activity for those who

A) receive annual performance reviews.
B) frequently experience flow.
C) view their work as a job.
D) are self-employed.

Question 21

Paul is seldom absent from work.However,an illness the previous week forced him to miss work for a day,and his supervisor evaluated his performance less positively than was warranted.This best illustrates the supervisor's vulnerability to

A) the interviewer illusion.
B) leniency errors.
C) recency errors.
D) the halo effect.

Question 22

The practice of 360-degree feedback is most clearly designed to improve

A) social leadership.
B) the experience of flow.
C) unstructured interviews.
D) performance appraisal.

Question 23

Shauna is a company executive who encourages employees to voice their opinions and to participate in developing workplace rules and production goals.Shauna best illustrates

A) the experience of flow.
B) a democratic leadership style.
C) a strengths-based selection system.
D) managing by objectives.

Question 24

Managers with a social leadership style would be most likely to

A) discourage employees from critically discussing controversial company policies.
B) inform employees of the exact deadlines for the completion of work projects.
C) mediate a personal dispute between two argumentative employees.
D) provide employees with relatively easy work assignments.

Question 25

A company executive enhances the success of her sales department by sending a congratulatory note to department employees who exceed their monthly sales quotas.The executive is most clearly making effective use of

A) the experience of flow.
B) a strengths-based selection system.
C) 360-degree feedback.
D) operant conditioning.

Question 26

An employee's high level of friendliness can lead a supervisor to judge the employee as a more reliable worker than is actually the case.This is said to illustrate

A) 360-degree feedback.
B) a halo error.
C) a voice effect.
D) a curse of knowledge.

Question 27

Compared with ineffective managers,those who excel invest a _______ proportion of their time and effort trying to remedy their employees' deficiencies and a _______ proportion of their time and effort trying to enhance their employees' talents.

A) larger;larger
B) smaller;smaller
C) larger;smaller
D) smaller;larger

Question 28

Business units with high levels of employee engagement experience somewhat

A) more organizational productivity and less employee turnover.
B) less organizational productivity and more employee turnover.
C) more organizational productivity and more employee turnover.
D) less organizational productivity and less employee turnover.

Question 29

Managing by objectives is most clearly designed to facilitate the process of

A) choosing a career.
B) setting work goals.
C) assessing job skills.
D) scripting employment interviews.

Question 30

Performance appraisal scales that specify in detail the precise behaviors that are indicative of poor,adequate,good,and excellent worker performance are most likely to inhibit

A) severity errors.
B) the experience of flow.
C) structured interviews.
D) 360-degree feedback.

Question 31

Encouraging employee productivity through recognition and reward illustrates effective use of

A) flow.
B) implementation intentions.
C) operant conditioning.
D) a strengths-based selection system.

Question 32

Danica is so unhappy with her work setting that she frequently complains to her colleagues and undermines what they are trying to accomplish.Danica could best be described as

A) actively disengaged.
B) experiencing a state of flow.
C) viewing work as a calling.
D) illustrating charisma.

Question 33

Modifying management practices and work assignments to increase employee engagement best illustrates the professional concerns of

A) human factors psychologists.
B) clinical psychologists.
C) personnel psychologists.
D) organizational psychologists.

Question 34

Managers who set standards and keep a group focused on its goals are said to excel in

A) task leadership.
B) 360-degree feedback.
C) a democratic management style.
D) human factors psychology.

Question 35

Miranda is the supervisor in the women's clothing department of a large store.Using a five-point scale,she is rating her workers' dependability,productivity,and so forth.She is using

A) a checklist.
B) strengths-based selection.
C) a graphic rating scale.
D) a behavior rating scale.

Question 36

Many experiments show that social leadership facilitates

A) worker morale.
B) 360-degree feedback.
C) a directive management style.
D) strength-based selection systems.

Question 37

A high level of worker involvement,enthusiasm,and identification with his or her business organization is most clearly an indication of

A) 360-degree feedback.
B) transformational leadership.
C) strengths-based selection.
D) employee engagement.

Question 38

Rating scales used to record the dependability and productivity of workers are most clearly designed to facilitate

A) flow.
B) structured interviews.
C) social leadership.
D) performance appraisal.

Question 39

Antonio,a sixth-grader,has just brought home a 30-word spelling test on which he spelled only 15 words correctly.If Antonio's parents want to effectively encourage higher levels of achievement in their son,they should tell him

A) "What's important is that you do your best always."
B) "Try to raise your next test score 5 points by typing your new spelling words into our computer."
C) "Test performance is often unrelated to how much you actually learned."
D) "If you don't perform better on your next test,you won't be allowed to watch television before bedtime."

Question 40

Through a task's ups and downs,people best sustain their mood and motivation when they focus on

A) a strengths-based selection system.
B) 360-degree feedback.
C) immediate goals.
D) outsourcing.

Question 41

Employees who enjoy high-quality colleague relationships also engage their work with more vigor.This best illustrates the value of a work environment that satisfies employees'

A) implementation intentions.
B) need to belong.
C) directive style.
D) charisma.

Question 42

The mode of a distribution of scores is the

A) score exceeded by 50 percent of all the scores.
B) most frequently occurring score.
C) arithmetic average of all the scores.
D) difference between the highest and lowest scores.

Question 43

Designing aircraft instrument displays in such a way as to minimize pilots' misperceptions of flight data would be of most direct interest to

A) personnel psychologists.
B) organizational psychologists.
C) evolutionary psychologists.
D) human factors psychologists.

Question 44

In a distribution of test scores,which measure of central tendency would likely be the most affected by a couple of extremely high scores?

A) median
B) mode
C) standard deviation
D) mean

Question 45

Psychologists who help design machines so that they make use of our natural perceptions are called

A) clinical psychologists.
B) personnel psychologists.
C) human factors psychologists.
D) organizational psychologists.

Question 46

The arithmetic average of a distribution of scores is the

A) mode.
B) median.
C) standard deviation.
D) mean.

Question 47

Employee engagement is most likely to be facilitated by

A) transformational leadership.
B) unstructured interviews.
C) halo errors.
D) human factors psychology.

Question 48

Seven members of a debate club reported the following individual earnings from their sale of cakes: $7,$13,$3,$5,$2,$9,and $3.In this distribution of individual earnings,the

A) mean is greater than the mode and greater than the median.
B) mean is equal to the mode and less than the median.
C) mean is greater than the mode and equal to the median.
D) mean is less than the mode and less than the median.

Question 49

Who would be most involved in designing user-friendly programming controls for HDTVs?

A) organizational psychologists
B) human factors psychologists
C) personnel psychologists
D) social psychologists

Question 50

The percentage of students whose average grades fall into various performance levels could be represented by a

A) standard deviation.
B) bar graph.
C) scatterplot.
D) coefficient.

Question 51

The mode,median,and mean are measures of

A) central tendency.
B) variation.
C) correlation.
D) statistical significance.

Question 52

Effective leaders of large corporations as well as smaller work teams have been found to exude a charisma that involves

A) using a directive management style.
B) understanding human factors psychology.
C) inspiring others with a goal-based vision.
D) viewing one's work as a career.

Question 53

The mode,median,and mean are most likely to have different values when they

A) describe a skewed distribution.
B) are derived from a limited range of scores.
C) represent the central tendency of a random sample.
D) represent the central tendency of an entire population.

Question 54

People who know how to operate a computer software program often have difficulty imagining what it is like not to know how to operate the program.Their difficulty best illustrates

A) the curse of knowledge.
B) the interviewer illusion.
C) employee disengagement.
D) the leniency error.

Question 55

Six students spent $10,$13,$2,$12,$13,and $4,respectively,on entertainment.The mode of this group's entertainment expenditures is

A) $9.
B) $11.
C) $12.
D) $13.

Question 56

Measures of central tendency are most useful for

A) constructing scatterplots.
B) summarizing data.
C) extrapolating from the sample to the population.
D) preventing skewed distributions.

Question 57

The most familiar measure of central tendency is the

A) mode.
B) mean.
C) median.
D) standard deviation.

Question 58

Chief executives who inspire their colleagues to "transcend their own self-interests for the sake of the collective" demonstrate

A) flow.
B) a directive style.
C) transformational leadership.
D) 360-degree feedback.

Question 59

Seven members of a girls' club reported the following individual earnings from their sale of raffle tickets: $5,$9,$4,$11,$6,$4,and $3.In this distribution of individual earnings,the

A) median is greater than the mean and greater than the mode.
B) median is less than the mean and less than the mode.
C) median is greater than the mean and less than the mode.
D) median is less than the mean and greater than the mode.

Question 60

For which of the following distributions of scores would the median most clearly be a more appropriate measure of central tendency than the mean?

A) 16,28,4,8,24
B) 9,6,9,12,9
C) 8,9,12,10,16
D) 6,18,4,5,2

Question 61

If IQ scores are normally distributed,having a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15,approximately what percentage of people have IQ scores between 85 and 115?

A) 34
B) 50
C) 68
D) 95

Question 62

On average,Caryl's school bus arrives on time,although sometimes it is a bit early or late.If the arrival times are distributed on a normal curve,which of the following statistics would enable Caryl to estimate the probability that her bus will arrive within 5 minutes of its scheduled arrival time on any given day?

A) median
B) mean
C) standard deviation
D) correlation coefficient

Question 63

The range is

A) the difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution.
B) the most commonly used measure of variation.
C) the average deviation of scores from the mean.
D) the most frequently occurring score in a distribution of scores.

Question 64

Standard deviation is to mean as ________ is to ________.

A) median;mode
B) variation;central tendency
C) scatterplot;bar graph
D) correlation;range

Question 65

If IQ scores are normally distributed,having a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15,approximately what percentage of people have IQ scores between 55 and 145?

A) 34
B) 68
C) 95
D) 100

Question 66

Which of the following provides only a rough indication of the degree of variation among a set of scores?

A) correlation coefficient
B) scatterplot
C) range
D) median

Question 67

If a set of standardized test scores is normally distributed,having a mean of 75 and a standard deviation of 6,approximately 95 percent of the scores are somewhere between

A) 72 and 78.
B) 75 and 87.
C) 69 and 81.
D) 63 and 87.

Question 68

If the points on a scatterplot are clustered in a pattern that extends from lower left to upper right,this would suggest that the two variables depicted are

A) normally distributed.
B) positively correlated.
C) negatively correlated.
D) not correlated.

Question 69

A normal curve would be LEAST likely to characterize a large random sample of

A) body weights.
B) intelligence scores.
C) family incomes.
D) professional baseball batting averages.

Question 70

Professor Chang displays the relationship between the height and weight measurements of over 500 randomly selected people on a scatterplot.The points on the scatterplot are most likely clustered in a pattern that

A) resembles a U-shaped curve.
B) extends from the upper left to the lower right of the plot.
C) resembles a bell-shaped curve.
D) extends from the lower left to the upper right of the plot

Question 71

To calculate the numerical value of the standard deviation,it would be most reasonable to first compute the value of the

A) mean.
B) mode.
C) correlation coefficient.
D) median.

Question 72

Professor Woo noticed that the distribution of her students' scores on the last biology test had an extremely small standard deviation.This indicates that the

A) test was given to a very small class of students.
B) test was a poor measure of the students' knowledge.
C) students generally performed very well on the test.
D) students' scores tended to be very similar to one another.

Question 73

Approximately 68 percent of the cases represented by the normal curve fall within ________ standard deviation(s)of the mean.

A) 1
B) 2
C) 3
D) 34

Question 74

A scatterplot graphically depicts the

A) standard deviation of a distribution of scores.
B) arithmetic average of a distribution of scores.
C) total population from which samples may be drawn.
D) degree of relationship between two variables.

Question 75

Which of the following statistical measures is most helpful for indicating the extent to which people's happiness predicts the number of friends they have?

A) standard deviation
B) median
C) mean
D) correlation coefficient

Question 76

Variation is to central tendency as range is to

A) mode.
B) bar graph.
C) scatterplot.
D) correlation.

Question 77

Approximately what percentage of the cases represented by the normal curve fall between -2 and +2 standard deviations from the mean?

A) 34
B) 68
C) 95
D) 100

Question 78

A correlation coefficient is a statistical measure of the

A) difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution.
B) extent to which two factors vary together.
C) statistical significance of a difference between two sample means.
D) frequency of scores at each level of some measure.

Question 79

The standard deviation is a measure of

A) central tendency.
B) variation.
C) statistical significance.
D) correlation.

Question 80

Two students in an art class are at least 20 years older than the others.Which measure of variation of class members' ages is most affected by the ages of these two students?

A) standard deviation
B) mode
C) median
D) range