Which psychologist, a former student of Wilhelm Wundt, wrote the 1913 book Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, which covered employee selection, training, and advertising?
Hugo Münsterberg
✓
Elton Mayo
Frederick Taylor
Kurt Lewin
Correct Answer
Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Münsterberg brought laboratory psychology into the workplace, and his 1913 book is a founding text of industrial psychology. Elton Mayo is known for his work on the Hawthorne studies of worker productivity. Frederick Taylor was an engineer who promoted scientific management. Kurt Lewin was a social psychologist known for research on group dynamics and leadership.
Category: History of I-O Psychology
Question 2
At an electric company plant, researchers found that worker output rose after almost any change in conditions, even a return to dim lighting, as long as the workers knew they were being studied. What is this finding called?
Placebo effect
Hawthorne effect
✓
Halo effect
Pygmalion effect
Correct Answer
Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect is the tendency for people to change their behavior, such as working harder, simply because they know they are being observed. The placebo effect is improvement caused by expecting a treatment to work. The halo effect is letting one good trait color an overall judgment of a person. The Pygmalion effect is people rising to meet someone else's high expectations of them.
Category: History of I-O Psychology
Question 3
Lillian Gilbreth and her husband Frank cut unnecessary movements out of factory, office, and household tasks using which method?
Structured interviews
360-degree feedback
Time-and-motion studies
✓
Personality testing
Correct Answer
Time-and-motion studies
Time-and-motion studies break a task into its individual movements and time them so wasted motions can be removed. Structured interviews are a hiring tool that asks every applicant the same scored questions. 360-degree feedback is a performance review method that pools ratings from many sources. Personality testing measures traits of job candidates rather than redesigning tasks.
Category: History of I-O Psychology
Question 4
An I-O psychologist redesigns an airplane cockpit so that pilots can read the gauges quickly and are less likely to flip the wrong switch. Which area of the field is this?
Organizational psychology
Industrial psychology
Occupational health psychology
Human factors psychology
✓
Correct Answer
Human factors psychology
Human factors psychology designs tools, machines, and workspaces to fit human abilities and limits so work is safer and more efficient. Organizational psychology studies social relationships at work, such as leadership and motivation. Industrial psychology focuses on describing jobs and selecting, training, and evaluating workers. Occupational health psychology focuses on stress, illness, and injury caused by work.
Category: Human Factors
Question 5
Before hiring anyone, a company carefully describes the tasks a position involves and the characteristics a worker needs to do it well. What is this process called?
Job analysis
✓
Performance appraisal
Orientation training
Job enrichment
Correct Answer
Job analysis
Job analysis produces an accurate description of a job's tasks and the worker characteristics it requires, and it is the foundation for selection, training, and evaluation. Performance appraisal evaluates how well a current employee is doing the job. Orientation training introduces new hires to the company. Job enrichment adds responsibility or variety to an existing job to make it more rewarding.
Category: Personnel Selection
Question 6
In personnel selection, a job's required KSAs are compared with each applicant's qualifications. What does KSAs stand for?
Key skills and assessments
Knowledge, skills, and abilities
✓
Knowledge, standards, and attitudes
Kindness, sociability, and agreeableness
Correct Answer
Knowledge, skills, and abilities
KSAs are the knowledge, skills, and abilities a worker needs for a job, identified by describing what a successful worker must be able to do. Key skills and assessments is not the standard meaning of the term. Knowledge, standards, and attitudes mixes in terms that are not part of the abbreviation. Kindness, sociability, and agreeableness are personality qualities, not the KSA framework.
Category: Personnel Selection
Question 7
A hiring manager asks every applicant the same prepared questions and scores each answer on the same rating scale. Compared with an informal, conversation-style interview, research shows this approach does what?
Predicts later job performance worse
Violates federal hiring law
Predicts later job performance better
✓
Removes every source of interviewer bias
Correct Answer
Predicts later job performance better
A structured interview uses the same questions and a standard scoring system for everyone, and meta-analyses find it predicts job performance better than unstructured interviews. Predicting performance worse reverses the research finding. Asking everyone the same questions does not violate federal hiring law; consistent treatment is encouraged. Removing every source of bias overstates it, since factors such as similarity to the interviewer can still influence ratings.
Category: Personnel Selection
Question 8
An employee's annual review combines ratings from her supervisor, her coworkers, the people she supervises, and her own self-rating. What is this method called?
Forced distribution
Management by objectives
Job rotation
360-degree feedback
✓
Correct Answer
360-degree feedback
360-degree feedback gathers performance ratings from all around the employee, including supervisors, peers, direct reports, the employee, and sometimes customers. Forced distribution ranks employees into preset categories, such as top, middle, and bottom groups. Management by objectives evaluates employees against goals they set with their manager. Job rotation moves workers through different positions and is not a rating method.
Category: Training and Appraisal
Question 9
A newly hired nurse is paired for several months with an experienced nurse who offers advice, support, and career guidance. Which form of training is this?
Mentoring
✓
Orientation training
Job-specific training
Cross-training
Correct Answer
Mentoring
Mentoring is a relationship in which an experienced employee guides a newer one, and research links it to better pay, promotions, and career outcomes for the person mentored. Orientation training introduces new hires to the company's history, policies, and culture. Job-specific training teaches particular duties or tools. Cross-training teaches an employee to perform the duties of other positions.
Category: Training and Appraisal
Question 10
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on which characteristics?
Height, weight, and physical appearance
Race, color, religion, sex, and national origin
✓
Education, income, and marital status
Political party and union membership
Correct Answer
Race, color, religion, sex, and national origin
Title VII bars hiring, pay, and other employment decisions based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Height, weight, and physical appearance are not among its protected categories. Education, income, and marital status are not protected by Title VII either. Political party and union membership fall outside Title VII, although other laws address some union activity.
Category: Employment Law
Question 11
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, an employer must provide what for a qualified worker with a disability, unless doing so would cause undue hardship?
Higher pay
Guaranteed promotions
Reasonable accommodations
✓
A shorter workweek
Correct Answer
Reasonable accommodations
The ADA requires reasonable accommodations, such as modified equipment or adjusted schedules, that let a qualified person with a disability do the job. Higher pay is not required, since the law is about equal opportunity rather than extra compensation. Guaranteed promotions are not part of the law. A shorter workweek might be one possible accommodation in some cases, but it is not what the law requires in general.
Category: Employment Law
Question 12
A job requirement that would normally count as discrimination, but is allowed because the trait is essential to doing the job, is known as what?
Adverse impact
Undue hardship
Affirmative action
Bona fide occupational qualification
✓
Correct Answer
Bona fide occupational qualification
A bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) permits an otherwise discriminatory requirement when it is truly necessary for the job, such as an age limit for airline pilots. Adverse impact describes a practice that disproportionately screens out a protected group. Undue hardship is the limit on what an employer must do to accommodate a disability. Affirmative action refers to efforts to increase opportunities for underrepresented groups.
Category: Employment Law
Question 13
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects workers in which age range from discrimination based on age?
40 and older
✓
18 and older
55 and older
65 and older
Correct Answer
40 and older
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 protects job applicants and employees who are 40 or older. 18 and older is the general age of adulthood, not the law's threshold. 55 and older is too high a cutoff. 65 and older is a common retirement age, not the point at which protection begins.
Category: Employment Law
Question 14
A manager believes employees naturally dislike work and will only perform if they are closely watched and threatened with punishment. Douglas McGregor called this managerial view what?
Theory Y
Theory X
✓
Theory Z
Scientific management
Correct Answer
Theory X
McGregor's Theory X assumes workers dislike work and must be controlled through direction and threats, which he saw as the traditional management approach. Theory Y assumes the opposite, that people seek fulfillment at work and want to help set goals. Theory Z is a later approach associated with long-term employment and group decision making. Scientific management is Frederick Taylor's method of analyzing work to improve efficiency, not a belief about worker motivation.
Category: Management and Leadership
Question 15
A leader inspires optimism about reaching shared goals, encourages employees to question assumptions and solve problems creatively, and pays attention to each person's needs. Which leadership style is this?
Transactional leadership
Autocratic leadership
Transformational leadership
✓
Laissez-faire leadership
Correct Answer
Transformational leadership
Transformational leaders motivate through charisma, inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration, and this style is generally found to be more effective. Transactional leadership relies on rewards and punishments to keep work on track and maintain the status quo. Autocratic leadership means the leader makes decisions alone. Laissez-faire leadership means the leader provides little direction at all.
Category: Management and Leadership
Question 16
During a team project, one member quietly puts in less effort, expecting the rest of the group to pick up the slack. What is this called?
Social facilitation
Groupthink
Team halo effect
Social loafing
✓
Correct Answer
Social loafing
Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to reduce their effort when working in a group, especially when individual contributions are hard to identify. Social facilitation is improved performance on simple tasks when others are present. Groupthink is poor group decision making driven by the desire for agreement. The team halo effect is the tendency to credit the team for success while blaming individuals for failure.
Category: Teams at Work
Question 17
A supervisor tells an employee that her promotion depends on agreeing to go on a date with him. Which type of sexual harassment is this?
Quid pro quo
✓
Hostile environment
Procedural injustice
Constructive discharge
Correct Answer
Quid pro quo
Quid pro quo harassment, meaning this for that, occurs when a job benefit is offered in exchange for sexual favors or withheld after a refusal, usually by someone with power over the target. Hostile environment harassment is a pattern of intimidating or offensive conduct, such as explicit jokes, without a specific job trade. Procedural injustice refers to unfair decision-making processes in general. Constructive discharge is when working conditions are made so intolerable that an employee feels forced to quit.
Category: Harassment and Fairness
Question 18
The shared values, norms, and unspoken assumptions that shape how a company operates and makes decisions make up its what?
Job satisfaction
Organizational culture
✓
Organizational citizenship
Procedural justice
Correct Answer
Organizational culture
Organizational culture is the set of values, norms, hierarchies, and assumptions that defines how an organization runs, and departments may develop their own subcultures. Job satisfaction is how much an individual employee enjoys the job. Organizational citizenship is voluntary behavior that helps the organization beyond required duties. Procedural justice is the perceived fairness of the processes used to make decisions.
Category: Work Attitudes and Culture
Question 19
Research on job satisfaction finds that which factor is only weakly related to how much people enjoy their jobs, partly because people quickly adapt to it?
The work itself
Clarity of one's role
Salary level
✓
Variety of tasks
Correct Answer
Salary level
Pay shows only a weak relationship with job satisfaction, in part because people adjust to a higher salary and it stops feeling special. The work itself is the strongest predictor of satisfaction. Clarity of one's role is part of work content and is linked to higher satisfaction. Variety of tasks is also an aspect of work content that predicts greater satisfaction.
Category: Work Attitudes and Culture
Question 20
A human factors specialist breaks a warehouse worker's routine into its individual steps to find a safer and more efficient way to do it. What is this technique called?
Job enrichment
Performance appraisal
Cognitive dissonance
Task analysis
✓
Correct Answer
Task analysis
Task analysis divides a task into its component elements so each step can be studied and improved for efficiency and safety. Job enrichment adds responsibility or variety to a job rather than studying its steps. Performance appraisal evaluates how well an employee is doing. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort of holding conflicting beliefs, a social psychology concept unrelated to work design.
Category: Human Factors