Branches of Psychology

Industrial-Organizational Psychology

Also Known As I-O Psychology

Citation Formats

General Reference

Psychology Atlas. "Industrial-Organizational Psychology." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://psychology.interactiveatlas.org/branches/industrial-organizational-psychology.

APA Style

Psychology Atlas. (n.d.). Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://psychology.interactiveatlas.org/branches/industrial-organizational-psychology

BibTeX

@misc{psychologyatlas-industrial-organizational-psychology,
  author = {Psychology Atlas},
  title = {Industrial-Organizational Psychology},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://psychology.interactiveatlas.org/branches/industrial-organizational-psychology},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is the branch of psychology that applies psychological principles to the workplace, covering personnel selection, performance appraisal, training, motivation, leadership and organizational culture, with roots in the early twentieth-century Hawthorne studies of worker behavior.

Facts

Disputed

Key Debate

Whether the field's tools and research agenda have served employers' interests in productivity more than workers' interests in fair treatment and protection. 1

I-O psychology has been criticized, particularly for its mid-twentieth-century record, as being responsive mainly to the concerns of management rather than workers; the industrial psychologist Arthur Kornhauser was noted as largely alone among his contemporaries in focusing on protecting workers rather than raising their productivity.

Key Debate

Whether the productivity gains attributed to the Hawthorne studies reflect a genuine psychological effect of attention and social relationships on workers, or are better explained by other confounds in the original experimental design; the question is now folded into the broader replication and interpretation debates that surround early twentieth-century organizational research. 1

The Hawthorne studies were never designed as tightly controlled experiments by later standards, so the field itself disagrees about how much of the productivity effect named after them is real.

Central Question

How do psychological principles explain and improve employee behavior, motivation and performance within organizations? 1

Cross-Tradition Connections