CHAPTER 1 NATURE AND SCOPE OF

INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Industrial psychology is that branch of psychology which delves into the study of human
behaviour in industrial organisations. In Industrial psychology, researchers are interested in a broad
range of topics related to the work environment, including the selection of the right person for a
particular job, the influence of attitudes on job performance, and the ways people work together in
groups
Most of the personnel problems are essentially the problems of industrial psychology. For
instance, during the employment process, the personnel department encounters with the problems of
selection and placement arising out of individual differences. Many of the psychological studies in
industry have been directed to test rating scales, interviews and similar techniques and devices for use
in vocational selection.
Definition of Industrial Psychology
Psychology is the science of human mind or, in other words, it is the study of human behaviour.
The application of the knowledge of psychology to the industrial situations is known as industrial
psychology. Thus industrial psychology is the study of people at work in industry and in business. It is
the study of their aptitudes and their qualifications for jobs.
C.S. George Industrial psychology is concerned with the entire spectrum of human behaviour.
Ernest J. McCormick Industrial psychology is the study of human behaviour in the work related
aspects of life and the application of knowledge of human behaviour to the minimization of
human problems in this context.
Thomas W. Harrell Industrial psychology may be defined as the study of people as individuals and
in groups and of the relationship between individual and group. Industrial psychology is
primarily concerned with the behaviour of people at work. To be specific, it is the study of
people as individuals and in groups and of the relationships between individuals and groups.
Blum and Naylor Industrial psychology is simply the applications or extension of psychological
facts and principles to the problems concerning human relations in business and industry. It is
the study of human relations, mental health of the workers on the job and ways to help to gain
good mental health for the workers who have become confused and upset. That means
industrial psychology is the study of principles and practices that affect the behaviour of human
beings. Industrial psychology is also concerned with physical aspect of work environment such
as lighting, ventilation and temperature and their effect on the output and safety of the workers.
Smith defined industrial psychology as For the practical purposes industrial psychology may be
defined as the study of conduct of those who exchange the work of their hands and brains for
the means to live.
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To conclude we can say that:

Industrial psychology is that branch of applied psychology that is concerned with
efficient management of an industrial labour force and especially with problems
encountered by workers in a mechanized environment.
Key Pillars of Industrial Psychology
Various concepts and techniques of industrial psychology are based on the following key
principles:1. Individual Differences: Individual differs in physical characteristics, intelligence, aptitudes,
personality, skills, etc. Therefore, every person should be selected, trained and treated on the
basis of the kind of person he is.
2. Causation of Human Behaviour: An individual does not just behave in one way or the other. It
is the situation which stimulates him to behave in a particular manner. Therefore, it is necessary
to understand the causes of behaviour before making an attempt to improve upon it.
3. Whole Person: The concept of whole person signifies that behaviour of a person at work cant
be studies in isolation. He has his background, emotions, sentiments and feelings which cannot
be separated from the skills he is using on the job. His performance at work is influenced by his
past and present environment.
4. Human Dignity: A person has emotions, sentiments and aspirations which have to be respected
by the organization. He must be treated with respect and dignity. He cant be treated like a
machine or commodity which has no sensitivity at all.
Aim and Objectives
The aim of industrial psychology is to give the worker greater physical and mental ease at
work. According to C.S. Myres, The aim of industrial psychology is primarily not to obtain greater
production or output but to give the worker greater ease at his work. Keeping this in mind we can
define aim of industrial psychology as:
Industrial approach (Personal factors)
- Determining competencies
- Staffing with employees
- Increasing competencies

Organisational approach (Environmental factors)

- motivating structure and culture
- providing information
- providing safe and enjoyable work condition

Role / Scope of Industrial Psychology

The aim of industrial psychology is to give the worker greater physical and mental ease at
work. To achieve the aim of industrial psychology, the work of the psychologist in industry can be
described as follows:
i. To investigate in an unbiased manner the ways in which psychological problems are handled at
present
ii. To develop new methods and to modify the methods which have been tried out and evaluated
iii. To formulate certain principles that will help in the solution of human relation problems

iv. The scope of industrial psychology is research rather than administration. The scope of industrial
psychology is limited to material and social environment to which an individual adapts him-self
while he is at work and by which his attitude is modified.
Thus, the role / scope of industrial psychologist can be further divided into 3 major groups and
their sub groups as follows:
Personnel Psychology
1. Job Analysis: A process of collecting information about various components of a job such as
duties, condition of work, individual qualifications of the worker.
2. Recruitment: A process of attracting, screening and selecting qualified people.
Personnel recruitment is the process of identifying qualified candidates in the workforce and
getting them to apply for jobs within an organization. Personnel recruitment processes include
developing job announcements, placing ads, defining key qualifications for applicants, and
screening out unqualified applicants.
3. Selection: Picking applicants from a pool of job applicants, who have the appropriate
qualifications and competency to do the job. Personnel selection is the systematic process of
hiring and promoting personnel. Personnel selection involves both the newly hired and
individuals who can be promoted from within the organization. Common selection tools include
ability tests (e.g., cognitive, physical, or psycho-motor), knowledge tests, personality tests,
structured interviews, the systematic collection of biographical data, and work samples.
4. Employee Performance Appraisal and Determination of Salaries: Performance appraisal is a
process of obtaining, analysing and recording information about the relative worth of an
employee. Performance appraisal or performance evaluation is the process of measuring an
individual's or a group's work behaviors and outcomes against the expectations of the job.
Performance appraisal is frequently used in promotion and compensation decisions, to help
design and validate personnel selection procedures, and for performance management.
Performance management may also include documenting and tracking performance information
for organization-level evaluation purposes.
5. Training and Development of Employees: Training is an attempt to improve a current or future
employees performance by increasing the employees ability to perform through learning.
Training is the systematic acquisition of skills, concepts, or attitudes that results in improved
performance in another environment. Training can be beneficial for the organization and for
employees in terms of increasing their value to their organization as well as their employability in
the broader marketplace. Many organizations are using training and development as a way to
attract and retain their most successful employees.
Organisational Psychology
1. Leadership: A process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of
others in the accomplishment of a common task. It is a process of influencing others to agree on a
shared purpose, and to work towards shared objectives. Leaders typically focus on inspiring
followers and creating a shared organizational culture and values, deal with initiating and
adapting to change. And undertake the tasks of setting a direction or vision, aligning people to
shared goals, communicating, and motivating.

2. Job Satisfaction: Job satisfaction is the amount of contentment (or lack of it) arising from the
interplay of the employees positive and negative feelings towards his/ her job. It reflects an
employee's overall assessment of their job, particularly their emotions, behaviours, and attitudes
about their work experience. Job satisfaction has been linked to important job outcomes
including attitudinal variables, absenteeism, employee turnover, and job performance. A 2010
meta-analyses found positive relationships between job satisfaction and life satisfaction,
happiness, positive effect, and the absence of negative effect.
3. Employee Motivation: Motivation is a driving force that propels people to action and continues
them to action. It is the process of stimulating people to action to accomplish desired goal.
Industrial psychology probes into human behaviour at work to determine the condition in which a
worker feels motivated and works willingly and whole heartedly to maximise productivity.
4. Conflict Management: Conflict may be defined as a struggle or contest between people with
opposing needs, ideas, beliefs, values, or goals. Conflict management involves acquiring skills
related to conflict resolution, self-awareness about conflict modes, conflict communication skills,
and establishing a structure for management of conflict in your environment. Learning how to
manage conflicts can decrease the odds of non-productive escalation.
5. Organisational Culture: Organizational culture can be described as a set of assumptions shared by
the individuals in an organization that directs interpretation and action by defining appropriate
behavior for various situations. There are three levels of organizational culture: artifacts, shared
values, and basic beliefs and assumptions. Artifacts comprise the physical components of the
organization that relay cultural meaning. Shared values are individuals' preferences regarding
certain aspects of the organization's culture (e.g., loyalty, customer service). Basic beliefs and
assumptions include individuals' impressions about the trustworthiness and supportiveness of an
organization, and are often deeply ingrained within the organization's culture. Organizational
culture has been shown to have an impact on important organizational outcomes such as
performance, attraction, recruitment, retention, employee satisfaction, and employee well-being.
6. Group Dynamics: The system of getting people in a company or institution to work together
effectively. The idea behind it is that a group of people working together can achieve much more
than if the individuals of the team were working on their own.
Human Factor / Ergonomics
1. Fatigue and Boredom: Fatigue is commonly used to denote a decrease in the capacity or
efficiency of a person to do the work because of previous work. It affects the workers muscles,
nerves and mind. Boredom is a mental state resulting from the continuous performance of a
repetitive and uninteresting activity.
2. Stress: Physical and psychosocial working conditions (termed stressors) that can elicit negative
responses (termed strains) from employees. Stress refers to an individuals reaction to a
disturbing factor in the environment. It can lead to physiological discomfort, some kind of
emotional unhappiness and strained relationships with other people.
3. Accident and Safety: An industrial accident is an unexpected occurrence in an industrial
establishment causing bodily injury to one or more persons. Meaning of safety at industries can
be understood as the fulfilment of the following conditions: zero accidents, freedom from danger
or risks, attitude change towards unsafe acts and conditions by employees and process of hazard
identification and safety management.
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4. Ergonomics: Ergonomics is the science of designing the job to fit the worker, rather than
physically forcing the workers body to fit the job. A field that combines engineering and
psychology and that focuses on understanding and enhancing the safety and efficiency of the
humanmachine interaction. Applying ergonomics to the workplace can:
reduce the potential for accidents;
reduce the potential for injury and ill health;
Improve performance and productivity.
Taking account of ergonomics and human factors can reduce the likelihood of an accident.
Sample activities in this subfield have included designing the optimal way to draw a map, designing
the most comfortable chair, and investigating the optimal work schedule etc.
In summary it would appear that psychologist employed by an industrial organisation is likely
to find himself required to tackle nearly any problem involving people.
Applications
Applications of Industrial Psychology
The importance of industrial psychology would be reflected in what it does for the industrial
concerns. Industrial psychology introduced matching of employees to jobs, for different jobs
requiring different skills and abilities. It emphasised the use of psychology in the field of personnel
testing, interviewing, attitude measurement, learning theory, training and monotony study, safety, job
analysis and human engineering. A number of psychologists such as Poffenberger, Burtt, Hepner and
Munstreberg made significant contributions to the field of industrial psychology. Munstreberg
developed an extremely active interest in seeking out ways in which psychology could be applied to
the problems in industry.
The knowledge of industrial psychology can be applied in the following areas:
1. Employment Testing: Modern industrial concerns use many psychological tests like intelligence
test, aptitude test, interest test, dexterity test, personality test, etc. These tests help in choosing
right type of people for the organisation. If these tests are properly applied, there will be lower
rate of labour turnover, higher productivity of employees and higher job satisfaction among the
employees.
2. Designing Training and Development Programme: The psychologist help in determining the
training needs of employees and designing the training programmes which can deliver good
results, and for the development of executives. The important techniques include teaching
machine, programmed learning, sensitivity training, role playing etc.
3. Job Evaluation: Job evaluation helps in designing a rotational wage structure within an
organisation. Important job factors like education, training, experience, degree of supervision,
degree of risk, etc. are considered to evaluate different jobs and determine their relative worth.
4. Performance Appraisal: The results of performance appraisal are more reliable and they can be
used for certain important personnel decisions like promotion, training, counselling, etc.
5. Counselling: Counselling can be done when the individual register himself with an employment
exchange. It is also necessary where the man on the job does not fell rightly placed. Sometime
workers have personal problems for which they require counselling by the experts.
6. Motivation of Personnel: Industrial psychology probes into behaviour of people at work to
determine the conditions in which an individual feels motivated and is willing to work
wholeheartedly to maximize his productivity.
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7. Improvement of Morale: It can go into the causes of low morale of employees and can determine
the factors influencing the relationship between attitudes of employees and their performance.
8. Human Engineering: Human engineering is concerned with the designing and laying out the
equipment in order to get the greater efficiency of man machine system. It helps to improve the
design, improve the product for the comfort of the users and increases the sale of product and
satisfaction of customers, reduce machine breakdowns, wastages of raw materials, and training
time to workers to minimise accidents and to introduce better performance and job satisfaction.
Specific Areas of Concern
Recruiting and selecting employees for jobs
Training employees
Assessing performance
Defining and analyzing jobs
Determining people feel about work
Determining why people act as they do at work
Effects work has on people
Effects people have on one another
How organizations are structured and function
Designing work
Designing tools and equipment
Employee Health and Safety
Importance for Engineering
1. The knowledge and techniques of motivation provided by industrial psychology helps the
engineer to get the work done through the efforts of the worker without much hardship.
2. Since the physical aspect of the work environment have great influence on the output and safety
of workers, the engineers by properly manipulating this aspect can greatly improve the output of
the employees as plant engineers and also avoid accidents as safety engineers
3. Since industrial psychology is concerned with the research and procurement of vital information
out of that research for causes and effects of human behaviour, solving human related problems
that occurs in plant situation is easy for the plant engineers.
4. The data provided by industrial psychology is essential for the design engineers to design the
proper machine and equipment, tools, etc. to get the greater efficiency of man-machine system.
5. The principles of ergonomics or human engineering which is the part of industrial psychology
concerned with the study of relationship of the worker and his job can help the design engineer or
an architectural engineer to design equipment, furniture and work places with the object of fitting
their design and characteristics to workers needs.
6. The study of lighting system, ventilation, noise control etc. by the plant engineers will also be
planned to prevent employee fatigue and to heighten his productive efficiency.
7. The finer aspects of counselling principles in industrial psychology can often greatly help to plant
and safety engineers to prevent accidents and ensure the plant as safety zone.

Historical Development of Industrial Psychology

Bryan & Harter (1897) published a first paper describing the study and application of
psychology to work activities (Morse code telegraphic) coined the term industrial psychology by
mistake. During the First and Second World War when various industrial organizations and plants
faced a number of problems related to production, efficiency and individual employees, the help of
industrial psychologist are in great demand. At this stage, industrial psychology received a special
status, although it began in America in 1901, and England soon after.
Industrial psychology may have gotten its start on December, 20, 1901, that was the evening
that Dr. Walter Dill Scott, a psychologist at Northwestern University gave an address discussing the
potential application of psychological principles to the field of advertising.
The first book, The Psychology of Industrial Efficiency, written by Hugo Munsterberg in
1913 was dealing with various problems faced by the industries and analysis of such problem from the
psychological point of view. During the war years, the Fatigue Research Board was organized in Great
Britain to discover the problems connected with working hours, condition of work, problems
associated with fatigue and monotony/boredom, accident and safety measures and other work related
matters.
In 1917, Journal of applied psychology made its appearance and at the same time it introduced
as a subject of applied psychology.
In 1925, social psychology of industry entered into the arena of industrial psychology therefore,
interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, theories of motivations, importance of communication
and other associated areas were investigated.
The classical studies, started in 1927 by the famous Hawthorne group, contributed to the
development of industrial psychology in a major way. Their finding ultimately changed the trends and
approach of industrial psychology from economic to social, from the work-oriented attitude to a
workers-oriented attitude.
During the Second World War, the applied psychology research unit of the Medical Research
Council of Great Britain carried out several researches and investigations to solve many industrial and
organizational problems. Without much question World War II was a major factor in growth of
psychology in industry. Although the American Association of Applied Psychology was formed in
1937 as the official organisation of industrial psychology (it later became Division 14 of the APA), it
was the huge psychological contribution to the war efforts which proved to so many people that
applied psychology has important and practical contributions to offer.
As in World War I, great emphasis was placed upon the development of tests for selecting and
classifying recruits. Also developed were selection programs for officers, various training programs of
specialized types and job analysis and performance evaluation techniques.
Human factor society, it was associated with the American group of applied psychology with
interest in human engineering problem. Ergonomics society, it was British counterpart of human
factor. Society occupational psychology and ergonomics are two journals. Considerable attention was
focussed on various human relations and social problems of industry during the later part of 1940's
and in the 1950's.
Problems related to supervision, group dynamics, leadership, employees' interaction with
others, employees attitude, morale, job satisfaction, communication process and others. In the

beginning of the 1960's organizational psychology began to enter the area of industrial psychology and
as such, special emphasis was given to the organizational inputs in the industrial situation.
The psychologist who has made valuable contributions to the development of industrial
psychology was Walter Dill Scott. The industrial psychology division of American Psychological
Association was established in 1945 and gave professional recognition to industrial psychology.
Though industrial psychology was a neglected branch of applied psychology in India, after the Second
World War and particularly after Independence, it got special recognition from Indian psychologists.
With the establishment of various universities, centre and institutes in India, research in industrial
psychology has been accelerated after 1950's.
In 1970's, the division of industrial psychology was renamed as the division of industrial and
organizational psychology. An eminent industrial and organizational psychologist of India Professor
Durganand Sinha (1971) has made a valuable survey of the important topics of research in industrial
psychology in India.

Difference between Industrial Psychology and Industrial Sociology

Industrial psychology is a branch of psychology which studies human behaviour in industrial
firms. Psychology is a normative science of behaviour which can be observed in the social,
economical, educational and other spheres. Wherever there are human beings, their behaviour will be
influenced by their relationships. If in the industrial field, human relations deteriorate, then the result is
strikes and lockouts which have a widespread impact upon the economy of the nation. Since the future
of every nation depends upon its industrial development and progress, this particular field of human
behaviour becomes extremely important. It is the aim of industrial psychology to study the principles
governing human behaviour in the organisational setting.
Industrial sociology studies problems concerning human relations in industry from the
sociological point of view. Even when working in an industry, the individual is never alone because he
constantly comes into contact with other workers, supervisors, managers and industrialists. In business,
the worker has to deal with all kinds of people.
S. No. Psychology
1
Psychology pertains to the study of the
human mind
2
Psychology can be said to be a science that
deals with individual mental behaviour
3
Psychology deals with individuals or small
groups
4
Psychology deals with human emotions
5
Psychology can be termed as an
experimental process

Sociology
Sociology pertains to learning human
behaviour
Sociology is a science that deals with the
origin and development of the human society
Sociology deals with a larger group or the
society itself
Sociology deals with the interaction of people
Whereas sociology as an observational process