The Human Factor

B-5 How do human factors psychologists work to create user-friendly machines and work settings?

Designs sometimes neglect the human factor. Psychologist Donald Norman bemoaned the complexity of assembling his new HDTV, related components, and seven remotes into a usable home theater system: “I was VP of Advanced Technology at Apple. I can program dozens of computers in dozens of languages. I understand television, really, I do. . . . It doesn’t matter: I am overwhelmed.”

How much easier life might be if engineers would routinely test their designs and instructions on real people. Human factors psychologists work with designers and engineers to tailor appliances, machines, and work settings to our natural perceptions and inclinations. Bank ATM machines are internally more complex than remote controls ever were, yet, thanks to human factors engineering, ATMs are easier to operate. Digital recorders have solved the TV recording problem with a simple select-and-click menu system (“record that one”). Apple has similarly engineered easy usability with the iPhone and iPad.

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Norman (2001) hosts a website (www.jnd.org) that illustrates good designs that fit people (FIGURE B.4). Human factors psychologists also help design efficient environments. An ideal kitchen layout, researchers have found, puts needed items close to their usage point and near eye level. It locates work areas to enable doing tasks in order, such as placing the refrigerator, stove, and sink in a triangle. It creates counters that enable hands to work at or slightly below elbow height (Boehm-Davis, 2005).

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FIGURE B.4 Designing products that fit people Human factors psychologist Donald Norman offers these and other examples of effectively designed products. The Ride On Carry On foldable chair attachment (left), “designed by a flight attendant mom,” enables a small suitcase to double as a stroller. The Oxo measuring cup (right) allows the user to see the quantity from above.
OXO Good Grips

Understanding human factors can help prevent accidents. By studying the human factor in driving accidents, psychologists seek to devise ways to reduce the distractions, fatigue, and inattention that contribute to 1.3 million annual worldwide traffic fatalities (Lee, 2008). After beginning commercial flights in the 1960s, the Boeing 727 was involved in several landing accidents caused by pilot error. Psychologist Conrad Kraft (1978) noted a common setting for these accidents: All took place at night, and all involved landing short of the runway after crossing a dark stretch of water or unilluminated ground. Kraft reasoned that, on rising terrain, city lights beyond the runway would project a larger retinal image, making the ground seem farther away than it was. By re-creating these conditions in flight simulations, Kraft discovered that pilots were deceived into thinking they were flying higher than their actual altitudes (FIGURE B.5). Aided by Kraft’s finding, the airlines began requiring the co-pilot to monitor the altimeter—calling out altitudes during the descent—and the accidents diminished.

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Figure 17.4: FIGURE B.5 The human factor in accidents Lacking distance cues when approaching a runway from over a dark surface, pilots simulating a night landing tended to fly too low. (Data from Kraft, 1978.)

Human factors psychologists can also help us to function in other settings. Consider the available assistive listening technologies in various theaters, auditoriums, and places of worship. One technology, commonly available in the United States, requires a headset attached to a pocket-sized receiver that detects infrared or FM signals from the room’s sound system. The well-meaning people who design, purchase, and install these systems correctly understand that the technology puts sound directly into the user’s ears. Alas, few people with hearing loss undergo the hassle and embarrassment of locating, requesting, wearing, and returning a conspicuous headset. Most such units therefore sit in closets. Britain, the Scandinavian countries, and Australia, and now many parts of the United States, have instead installed loop systems (see www.hearingloop.org) that broadcast customized sound directly through a person’s own hearing aid. When suitably equipped, a hearing aid can be transformed by a discreet touch of a switch into an in-the-ear loudspeaker. Offered convenient, inconspicuous, personalized sound, many more people elect to use assistive listening.

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Designs that enable safe, easy, and effective interactions between people and technology often seem obvious after the fact. Why, then, aren’t they more common? Technology developers sometimes mistakenly assume that others share their expertise—that what’s clear to them will similarly be clear to others (-Camerer et al., 1989; Nickerson, 1999). When people rap their knuckles on a table to convey a familiar tune (try this with a friend), they often expect their listener to recognize it. But for the listener, this is a near-impossible task (Newton, 1991). When you know a thing, it’s hard to mentally simulate what it’s like not to know, and that is called the curse of knowledge.

“The better you know something, the less you remember about how hard it was to learn.”

Psychologist Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style, 2014

The point to remember: Everyone benefits when designers and engineers tailor machines and environments to fit human abilities and behaviors, when they user-test their inventions before production and distribution, and when they remain mindful of the curse of knowledge.

RETRIEVE IT

Question

Name two main divisions of industrial-organizational psychology, and a related field.
ANSWER: personnel psychology, organizational psychology, human factors psychology
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The human factor in safe landings Advanced cockpit design and rehearsed emergency procedures aided pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate who earned a Master’s degree in industrial psychology. In January 2009, Sullenberger’s instantaneous decisions safely guided his disabled airplane onto New York City’s Hudson River, where all 155 of the passengers and crew were safely evacuated.
Steven Day/AP Photo

REVIEW Psychology at Work

Learning Objectives

Test Yourself by taking a moment to answer each of these Learning Objective Questions (repeated here from within the Appendix). Research suggests that trying to answer these questions on your own will improve your long-term memory of the concepts (McDaniel et al., 2009).

Question

B-1 What is flow, and what are the key subfields related to industrial-organizational psychology?
ANSWER: Flow is a completely involved, focused state of consciousness with diminished awareness of self and time. It results from fully engaging one's skills. Personnel psychology and organizational psychology are two key subfields of I/O psychology, and an allied field is human factors psychology.

Question

B-2 How do personnel psychologists help with job seeking, employee selection, work placement, and performance appraisal?
ANSWER: Personnel psychologists work to provide training programs for job seekers; devise selection methods for new employees; recruit and evaluate applicants; design and evaluate training programs; identify people's interests and strengths; analyze job content; and appraise individual and organizational performance. Unstructured, subjective interviews foster the interviewer illusion; structured interviews pinpoint job-relevant strengths and are better predictors of performance. Checklists, graphic rating scales, and behavior rating scales are useful performance appraisal methods.

Question

B-3 What is the role of organizational psychologists?
ANSWER: Organizational psychologists examine influences on worker satisfaction and productivity and facilitate organizational change. Employee satisfaction and engagement tend to correlate with organizational success.
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Question

B-4 What are some effective leadership techniques?
ANSWER: Effective leaders harness job-relevant strengths; set specific, challenging goals; and choose an appropriate leadership style. Leadership style may be goal-oriented (task leadership), group-oriented (social leadership), or some combination of the two.

Question

B-5 How do human factors psychologists work to create user-friendly machines and work settings?
ANSWER: Human factors psychologists contribute to human safety and improved design by encouraging developers and designers to consider human perceptual abilities, to avoid the curse of knowledge, and to test users to reveal perception-based problems.

Terms and Concepts to Remember

Test yourself on these terms.

Question

flow (p. B-1)
industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology (p. B-2)
personnel psychology (p. B-2)
organizational psychology (p. B-2)
human factors psychology (p. B-2)
structured interview (p. B-6)
task leadership (p. B-11)
social leadership (p. B-12)
group-oriented leadership that builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support.
a completely involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of self and time, resulting from optimal engagement of one's skills.
goal-oriented leadership that sets standards, organizes work, and focuses attention on goals.
a field of psychology allied with I/O psychology that explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be made safe and easy to use.
an I/O psychology subfield that helps with job seeking, and with employee recruitment, selection, placement, training, appraisal, and development.
interview process that asks the same job-relevant questions of all applicants, each of whom is rated on established scales.
the application of psychological concepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces.
an I/O psychology subfield that examines organizational influences on worker satisfaction and productivity and facilitates organizational change.
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Experience the Testing Effect

Test yourself repeatedly throughout your studies. This will not only help you figure out what you know and don’t know; the testing itself will help you learn and remember the information more effectively thanks to the testing effect.

Question 17.1

1. People who view their work as a calling often experience ________, a focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of themselves and of time.

A.
B.
C.
D.

Question 17.2

2. psychologists study the recruitment, selection, placement, training, appraisal, and development of employees; psychologists focus on how people and machines interact, and on optimizing devices and work environments.

Question 17.3

3. A personnel psychologist scripted a set of questions to ask all applicants for a job opening. She then trained the firm's interviewers to ask only these questions, to take notes, and to rate applicants' responses. This technique is known as a(n)

A.
B.
C.
D.

Question 17.4

4. In your job, you rate your own performance, your manager's, and your peers'. Your manager, your peers, and your customers also rate your performance. Your organization is using a form of performance appraisal called

A.
B.
C.
D.

Question 17.5

5. What type of goals will best help you stay focused and motivated to do your best work in this class?
ANSWER: Focusing on specific, short-term goals, such as maintaining a regular study schedule, will be more helpful than focusing on more distant general goals, such as earning a good grade in this class.

Question 17.6

6. Research indicates that women are more likely than men to have a leadership style.

Question 17.7

7. Effective managers often exhibit

A.
B.
C.
D.

Question 17.8

8. To reduce users' frustration and to avoid accidents, human factors psychologists help organizations avoid the curse of knowledge, which is the tendency for

A.
B.
C.
D.

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