- Hello, all you big beautiful brains out there. Today, we're going to talk about what is I/O psychology. Before we get started, take a minute to subscribe to Psy vs Psy. Help out your friendly neighborhood psychologist while I tell you all about I/O psychology and its 3 branches. 

I/O stands for Industrial Organizational psychology. And because psychologists are really boring at naming stuff, that means I/O psychologists work with industry and organizations. I/O psychologists study how human behavior affects work and how we are affected by work. Most I/O psychologists are working for two things-- to make the workplace a better, more productive place, and to make your workplace easier for you to cope with as an employee. 

I/O psychology is an applied discipline, meaning that most I/O psychologists are out working in businesses and with employees to make these positive changes. As applied psychologists, I/O psychologists have to know about all the other disciplines of psychology, like social psychology, personality, biopsych, and areas like learning memory or motivation, in order to properly do their jobs. 

There are a lot of different factors at play when you're looking at examining work and productivity. Quite often, you'll be able to trace workplace issues back to maybe a personality type conflict or a motivational issue. So you need to know quite a bit about psychology as a whole to be able to do your job effectively. 

You'll find a lot of I/O psychologists working in human resources or management, but you'll also find a ton who do private independent consultant work. No matter where they work, the work that IO psychologists do is incredibly important. Most of us spend a good portion of our adult lives working. Making that work a more productive and more enjoyable experience is something that can make the whole world better. 

Because I/O covers such a broad area, I/O psychologists have split it into three areas based on focus or area of interest. The first is industrial psychology. Industrial psychology is the personnel side of human resources. Specializing in this area means that you're involved in things like describing job responsibilities and requirements, and making job descriptions, as well as meeting other employee needs with things like insurance, retirement, or other benefits. Industrial psychologists are also involved with hiring, training, and evaluating employees. 

The next area is organizational psychology. Organizational psychologists are more responsible for the organization as an entire entity. They focus more on things like management, leadership, and organizational culture. They will be responsible for doing things like setting organizational policy, and procedures that promote employee well-being. For instance, a policy to prevent things like workplace harassment. 

The last branch is called human factors psychology, or sometimes ergonomics. This area is all about the safety and health of employees, for instance, making sure that appropriate federal and state safety regulations are followed, or making sure that employees have appropriate furniture and tools to be able to properly and comfortably perform their job duties. Human factors psychologists are also heavily involved in production, experimentation, design, and manufacture in order to make sure that employees environment are safe. 

If you want to know more about the psychologists working to make the world a better place, make sure you subscribe to Psy vs Psy so you can get all of our other videos and you can learn all about the science of psychology. Until next time, keep thinking, and I'll see you all later. Bye. 

So I'm an I/O psychologist. That's-- it's not really a joke. I just-- I just wanted to share.