About I/O

The Industrial-organizational psychology course is the study of psychology within the workplace. It specifically addresses how co-workers can interact, how people behave at work, and how people can improve their job satisfaction. I took this course during the summer semester in my junior year and learned many different aspects of what makes someone a great leader along with several different theories of leadership; the trait theory and the behavior theory. The trait theory of leadership is centered around identifying personality traits that are associated with good leaders. The behavior theory involves identifying the behaviors that are associated with good leaders; such as speaking clearly and directly towards someone. An I/O psychologist can examine what makes someone a great leaders in a particular role through an organizational assessment. This particular assessment is an assessment of the workplace environment in which different departments and meetings with supervisors to ensure support for different trainings and assessments. Being a leader specifically is about being able to organize, plan, and prioritize your work during the workplace.

 

Class Content

Although this class was fast paced as it was during the summer semester, our class did an activity that taught me what my role be as a leader. The “Big Five” (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) are what psychologists saw as a summary of personality traits that makes everyone some form of degree of. I took a quiz to determine how my personality appears on the “Big Five” (results shown down below). During our online class, we discussed how these traits can correspond to being a good leader. Taking this quiz was indeed helpful because it allowed me to identify my strengths along with things that I may need to further implement in being a good leader.

 

Click here to take the quiz yourself! 

https://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/