Psychology at Work

B-1

B-1 What is flow, and what are the key subfields related to industrial-organizational psychology?

For most people, work is life’s biggest single waking activity. To live is to work. Work helps satisfy several levels of need identified in Abraham Maslow’s (1970) hierarchy of needs. Work supports us. Work connects us. Work defines us. Meeting someone for the first time, and wondering who they are, we may ask, “So, what do you do?”

Individuals across various occupations vary in their attitudes toward their work. Some view their work as a job, an unfulfilling but necessary way to make money. Others view their work as a career, an opportunity to advance from one position to a better position. The rest—those who view their work as a calling, a fulfilling and socially useful activity—report the highest satisfaction with their work and with their lives (Dik & Duffy, 2012; Wrzesniewski et al., 1997, 2001).

This finding would not surprise Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [chick-SENT-me-hi] (1990, 1999). He observed that people’s quality of life increases when they are purposefully engaged. Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and stressed, and the apathy of being underwhelmed and bored, lies a zone in which people experience flow. Can you recall being in a zoned-out flow state while texting or playing a video game? If so, then perhaps you can sympathize with the two Northwest Airlines pilots who in 2009 were so focused on their laptops that they missed Earth-to-pilot messages from their control tower. The pilots flew 150 miles past their Minneapolis destination—and lost their jobs.

Csikszentmihalyi formulated the flow concept after studying artists who spent hour after hour painting or sculpting with focused concentration. Immersed in a project, they worked as if nothing else mattered, and then, when finished, they promptly forgot about it. The artists seemed driven less by external rewards—money, praise, promotion—than by the intrinsic rewards of creating the art. Nearly 200 other studies confirm that intrinsic motivation, as well as extrinsic incentives, predict performance (Cerasoli & Nicklin, 2014).

Csikszentmihalyi’s later observations, of people from varied occupations and countries, and of all ages, confirmed an overriding principle: It’s exhilarating to flow with an activity that fully engages our skills (Fong et al., 2015). Flow experiences boost our sense of self-esteem, competence, and well-being. Idleness may sound like bliss, but purposeful work enriches our lives. Busy people are happier (Hsee et al., 2010; Robinson & Martin, 2008). One research team interrupted people on about a quarter-million occasions (using a smart phone app), and found people’s minds wandering 47 percent of the time. They were, on average, happier when not mind-wandering (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010).

In many nations, work has changed, from farming to manufacturing to knowledge work. More and more work is outsourced to temporary employees and consultants or to workers communicating electronically from off-site workplaces. As work changes, have our attitudes toward our work also changed? Has our satisfaction with work increased or decreased? Has the psychological contract—the sense of mutual obligations between workers and employers—become more or less trusting and secure? These are among the questions that fascinate psychologists who study work-related behavior.

B-2

Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology applies psychology’s principles to the workplace (TABLE B.1). Here we consider two of I/O psychology’s subfields and a related field: