Industrial-organizational psychology's origins in World War I and the Hawthorne studies

¶ … psychology's contribution to the war effort during WWI. 2)Describe the results of the original Hawthorne Study regarding the relationship between lighting and efficiency. What was significant about this study?

Industrial Organizational (I/O) Psychology

Psychology was just emerging as a field of scientific study and application in the years just before World War I. American psychologists were intrigued with Alfred Binet's work with mental measurement, as well as the scientific management movement to increase worker productivity (Historical pg). However, when World War I began, "the problem of assimilating millions of U.S. civilians into the armed services... brought the tools of psychologists to the military environment" (Historical pg).

At the start of the war, the president of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Robert M. Yerkes, headed a meeting of psychologists to discuss how they could assist the war effort (Historical pg). Yerkes was most responsible for bringing psychology in the war effort by screening recruits for mental deficiency and classifying and assigning selected recruits to army jobs (McCarthy pg). Committees of psychologists were also established to investigate soldier motivation, morale, discipline, and psychological problems of physical incapacity, such as 'shell shock' (McCarthy pg). Other issues included measurement of troop morale and assimilation into the military, as well as the "development of special trade tests to assess skills such as combat leadership and flying aptitude" (McCarthy pg). "The successful program of mental testing of recruits...resulted in the appropriate placement of new soldiers into military jobs and officer training" (Historical pg).

The greatest influence on the field of I/O psychology from this era was the Hawthorne studies. In 1924, researchers from Harvard University, none of whom were psychologists, began a series of experiments at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company. The experiments were an attempt to study the relationship between lighting and efficiency (McCarthy pg). The results concluded that "increased lighting resulted in increased efficiency" (McCarthy pg). However, the experiments also showed that even after lighting was dimmed to 'faint moonlight levels,' efficiency continued to improve (McCarthy pg). These surprising results were explained in "terms of previously unrecognized aspects of human behavior in the workplace" (McCarthy pg). The researchers concluded that it was the employees' desire to please them that led to the results. It seems the workers were flattered that distinguished Harvard investigators were studying them, thus, they were trying to impress the researchers by being more productive (McCarthy pg). Once the employees had grown used to the researchers' presence, they returned to their normal levels of productivity (McCarthy).