Never Forget Your Occam’s Razor When Travelling!

In my previous role in the UK, I was often confronted by very complex measures of psychological traits. This included the likes of multi-faceted competency models, complex appraisal forms, and measures of engagement with more scales than a grand piano.

Having factor analysed the results of many of these models, I can say that I rarely see them hold up. What does result is a far simpler structure of a few key constructs that account for most of the variability in job performance. I’m always reminded of the law of parsimony which results in simple models often being the finest.

In I/O psychology, we have examples where this is the case. Professor Paul Barrett, one of the most influential people in my career, was instrumental in creating a single psychometric tool that, while never fully commercialised, was a real innovation in our field.

For those that may have forgotten the role of parsimony, I draw your attention to some older papers that are often forgotten in this field. These indicate that simplicity will be more beneficial than complexity when measuring human behaviour.

Scarpello and Campbell (1983) in Personnel Psychology looked at whether a single item (1-5 scale) global measure of job satisfaction was equivalent to the sum of facet satisfactions. They concluded that the whole is more complex than the sum of the parts, and may in fact be more inclusive than facet measures.

Wanous, Reichers, and Hudy (1997) in the Journal of Applied Psychology evaluated single item measures of job satisfaction and concluded that they can be used instead of facet measures in some instances, including practical considerations of face validity, cost, and time. They suggested test-retest reliability of .70. A subsequent article by Wanous and Hudy (2001) in Organisational Research Methods confirmed this, looking at teacher effectiveness but with many of the same arguments.

A Big Theory

For my last blog on the psychological articles in the Economist I would like to draw people’s attention away from I/O Psychology and into more fundamental science. For those that don’t know, Stephen Hawkins is attempting to find a unifying theory of the universe that connects both theories of the very large (such as gravity) with the theories that we use to explain the very small (e.g. quantum physics).  The search for a unifying theory of physics is a holy grail and reminds me how far psychology let alone I/O needs to develop to become more than merely a collection of ‘random studies’.

One attempt at such a theory however, is progressing by researchers such as Dr Lichtman and Dr Brenner and others in the emerging science of connectomics (Economist April 11, 2009). Connectomics is the study of nerve cells and the connections between them. The goal is to get a complete circuit diagram of the brain so that the most complicated object in the known universe will be better understood.

In looking at the scale of this type of project I’m completely in awe of what must be considered a far more fundamental science than my own discipline. I’m also reminded of the hotchpotch of science that is I/O psychology and the gap between our discipline and real breakthroughs in scientific discovery. Uncovering that bright people who work hard perform better at work is hardly likely to make it in to the next edition of ‘Nature’ but is seen as a profound and far finding in I/O Psychology.

Applied psychology has been all of my working life and I would not change this for anything. I would however suggest that we need to be thinking like real scientists and looking for our ‘systems’ if we are really going to unlock the secrets of human behaviour at work.

That was my last blog in the series of Economist articles related to I/O. Next time you are waiting at an airport or in a magazine store I would like to strongly suggest that you have a read of the current Economist which is guaranteed to have at least one gem of knowledge applicable to I/O psychology.