For We Need More Jolly Good Fellows
This column is both a history lesson and a song of praise for
SIOP. It took courage and foresight for us to break from APA
and form SIOP. Since the time we did so, I-O psychology has
not only grown (the field has more than doubled in size) but
flourished. I-O psychology now has a global presence. Recently the U.S. Department of Labor published a report listing the
fastest growing jobs in society. Guess who was ranked #1?
That’s right, us! It took a long time and tireless effort, but we
are now on top, and SIOP is going to make sure we stay there.
There are 54 divisions of APA. Think of them as 53 competitors who want a piece of our action. It ain’t happening folks.
The mark of distinction of any scientific society is how many
headliners, stars, or big time players you have. The APA honors its luminaries by granting them the status of “Fellow.”
The more Fellows a division has, the bigger is its bragging
rights. I became a Fellow of Division 14 in 1984. Guess how
many Fellows were selected that year in our division? Two,
me and someone else whose name I don’t remember. This
doling out of Fellows with an eyedropper serves no purpose
other than to demonstrate self-defeating exclusivity. Simply
put, two got it, and all other members didn’t.
Paul M. Muchinsky*
Hypergraphic Press, Inc.
* Fan mail may be sent to
[email protected]
After we created SIOP, we finally realized the wisdom of the
old union principle: There is strength in numbers. Every year
the number of new Fellows in SIOP grows. In 2014 alone 24
new Fellows were selected. I bet we had more new Fellows
in that one year than the entire decade of the 1980s. 24 is
great, but it is not enough to keep us on top. Don’t be deluded into thinking the other divisions are sitting back watching
us Fellow-up. They are Fellowing-up too! I ran some linear
programming analyses and concluded we need 50 new Fellows every year to stay on top. I know what you are thinking.
If we select 50 new Fellows per year, we will soon be selecting graduate students. Not true. I have a plan.
We simply have to take a page from the playbook of the Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF) in Cooperstown. Every year the HOF
inducts new honorees. Being selected into the HOF is like be-
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January 2015, Volume 52, Number 3
ing selected a Fellow of SIOP. But the HOF
has two ways to get in. The first is what we
use, a committee that examines the credentials of recent players. The second way
is what SIOP needs to use as well. Another
committee examines the credentials of
people who, through regrettable neglect
or oversight, were not given fair consideration. This committee also supplies new
inductees into the HOF. And here is the
key point. The vast majority of these new
inductees are dead. Their selection into the
HOF is a posthumous recognition of their
achievements.
2. Fredrick W. Taylor. Taylor was one of
the founders of I-O psychology. He
developed methods to enhance productive efficiency through work design
that are still practiced today. Critics
will say that Taylor, who had no education or training in psychology, should
therefore not be honored by a professional association of psychologists.
Not being a psychologist is now an
irrelevant decision-making criterion in
selecting SIOP Fellows. You no longer
have to be one to be selected as an
outstanding one.
So this is the way it will go. Every year SIOP
will select 25 new living Fellows. If SIOP
can do 24 in one year, adding one more
should be no big deal. However, in addition to the 25 new living Fellows, there will
be 25 new dead Fellows. That is how we
can get to 50 per year. Think of the new
dead Fellows as a one-for-one quota system to correct for past injustice.
3. Timothy Leary. Leary, a psychologist,
is credited with identifying two levels
of meaning in life. The first level is
the day-in and day-out drudgery of
reality, riddled with its innumerable
imperfections. However, with the aid
of a pharmacological catalyst, one can
take a trip to a second level in which
you sublimely soar through ethereal
visions of cascading sensory modalities. Have you ever been asked about
the relationship between intelligence
and personality (for example), and you
respond, “Are you talking about the
measurement level or the construct
level?” If so, you are channeling Leary.
Turn on, tune in, drop out.
To get the dead ball rolling for 2015, I have
identified the first batch of deceased honorees. The following year, and all subsequent years, the dead Fellows subcommittee of SIOP gets to do this, not me. So, as a
service to SIOP, The High Society presents
the 2015 inaugural class of 25 new dead
Fellows in SIOP.
1. Hugo Münsterberg. Talk about a miscarriage of justice and being wrongly
ignored, Münsterberg is credited with
founding the field of I-O psychology.
He is our godfather. Münsterberg’s
exclusion as a Fellow of SIOP is like not
inviting the bride to her own wedding.
The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist
4. B. F. Skinner. If SIOP is magnanimous,
it will make Skinner a Fellow. Skinner
is the Anti-Christ of SIOP, the man we
love to hate. The author of extraordinarily influential research, he received
the highest scientific award bestowed
by the United States government: The
National Medal of Science. Skinner is
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the most prominent American psychologist in history. Skinner made his contributions to psychology all the while
giving the finger to the madonna of
SIOP, theory.
5. Karl Pearson. Pearson is singularly
responsible for creating a common
language by which all I-O psychologists
can communicate with each other, no
matter their nationality. He introduced
us to the members of his Are family:
Little Are, Big Are, Are Hat, Are Bar,
Multiple Are, Are Squared, Biserial
Are, Point-Biserial Are, Partial Are,
Semi-Partial Are, and other extended
family members. Can’t you just see the
family reunion photo?
6. Kurt Lewin. Lewin was a noted social
psychologist who uttered the memorable line, “There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory.” Journal editors
adore theories. How many academics
in SIOP get promoted and tenured by
testing Lewin’s love object? Practical,
indeed. Career building, in fact.
7. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As President of the United States, Roosevelt
signed legislation that created the
Dictionary of Occupational Titles, the
forerunner of one of I-O psychology’s
finest professional accomplishments,
the Occupational Information Network. FDR → DOT → O*NET → SIOP.
QED.
8. Michael Jackson. Jackson is proof that
validity and diversity need not be a dilemma. As a singer he sold the second
highest number of albums of any solo
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recording artist in history. As a dancer he was favorably compared to the
legendary Fred Astaire. And talk about
diversity! Jackson represented five of
the seven colors of the rainbow all by
himself.
9-15. The Seven Dwarfs. Not much has
been heard from these vertically challenged guys for over 75 years, so it is
probably safe to assume they have all
passed. Who can forget that classic
scene in the Walt Disney film where
the seven dwarfs march off with their
picks and shovels singing what would
become the Official SIOP Theme Song:
“I-O, I-O, It’s Off to Work We Go.” Can’t
you just hear Dopey’s acceptance
speech?
16. Benito Mussolini. I-O practitioners
love to talk about “drivers,” things that
drive change. Mussolini and his cronies were the drivers of WWII. If the
United States had not entered WWII,
there would have been no need for
I-O psychologists to create the Army
General Classification Test. That test
showcased our ability to develop useful large-scale assessments in a time of
urgency. Gracie, Il Duce.
17. Jean Shrimpton. Shrimpton was the
first of the supermodels. In the 1960s
she adorned the cover of more than
200 magazines. For about 50 years I-O
psychologists have been developing
models. While some are very good,
none are super. This British super
model will always be emulated but
never equaled.
January 2015, Volume 52, Number 3
18. Knute Rockne. In the 1920s Rockne was
the fabled football coach of the University of Notre Dame. His teams were
graced with some of the finest individual
players of the game in the first half of the
20th century. Nevertheless, Rockne emphasized the importance of team work
in playing a team sport, not individual
accomplishment. He immortalized the
expression, “Taking one for the team.”
However, it was never made clear just
exactly who was to take what where.
19. Lyndon Baines Johnson. Johnson was
the U.S. president who signed the Civil
Rights Act into law. How many billable
hours can I-O psychologists attribute
to that stroke of Johnson’s pen? Johnson’s campaign slogan was “All the
Way with LBJ.” For I-O psychologists
it was “All the Way (to the Bank) with
LBJ.” Thank you, Lyndon!
20. Maria Curie. SIOP honors Madame
Curie for demonstrating both the benefits and liabilities of workplace romances. She fell in love with, and then
married, her lab partner. They went on
to be co-recipients of the Nobel Prize
in physics. Then her husband died suddenly in a tragic accident. She subsequently fell in love with her husband’s
married student. The press created
a huge scandal out of the affair. Academia shunned her, driving her into
reclusion under an assumed name.
When she was awarded another Nobel
Prize (this one in chemistry), suddenly
academia welcomed back the world’s
only two-time Nobel Prize winner.
SIOP welcomes Madame Curie as well.
The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist
21. Al Capone. Capone advocated using
multiple methods in combination to
increase the likelihood of goal attainment. Although a man more of action
than words, Capone carved out a
memorable phrase that captured his
multivariate philosophy: “You can get
more with a smile and a gun than you
can with a smile alone.”
22. Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi was a
19th century Italian freedom fighter.
Bold and dashing, he fought in several
wars of independence, leading the
movement to be free of centralized
oppression. In the mid-1980s the courageous leaders of I-O psychology who
fought to break from APA and create
SIOP all embodied the spirit of Garibaldi. In addition to his courage, SIOP
honors Garibaldi’s foresight to use the
imagery of baseball’s emerging societal presence to defiantly tell Napoleon
III: “Non rompere i coglioni!”
23. Richard J. Daley. Daley served as the
mayor of Chicago for 21 years and was
known as the last of the big city bosses.
His administrations were awash in corruption, but Daley himself was never
formally charged. If there were an Encyclopedia of Operational Organizational
Politics, Daley would have been the senior editor-in-charge. SIOP honors Daley
for putting into practice the theory of
participative decision making by getting
dead people in Chicago to vote in municipal, state, and national elections.
24. Willy Loman. Loman was the mournful protagonist in Arthur Miller’s Death
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of a Salesman. Loman always had his
nose pressed up against the window,
forever on the outside looking in,
chronically ignored. He had fanciful
ideas but never were they brought to
fruition. It has been almost 40 years
since the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection were published. They
have never been revised despite SIOP’s
impressive advancements in understanding test validation. Willy, we feel
your pain.
25. Babe Ruth. The other day I was reading a bio of a social psychologist who
somehow transformed the impact
factor of the journals in which he published into his own personal impact
factor. If this narcissistic dweeb thinks
he has such great impact on life, he
should compare himself to the man
who defined impact: Babe Ruth. In
1927 Ruth hit 60 home runs, more
than what every team hit that year
in the American League. Three years
later the New York Yankees paid Ruth
an annual salary of $80,000, while the
league average was about $15,000.
When told he was paid more than
the president of the United States,
Ruth replied, “I had a better year than
Hoover.” If SIOP wants the gold standard for individual impact, his name is
George Herman Ruth.
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Think about it. We will have 1,000 new
Fellows in just 2 decades. That is less time
than SIOP has been in existence, and that
is 1,000 new Fellows on top of those we already have. The other divisions of APA will
tremble before our might! What did they
expect? Industrial-organizational psychologists happen to know a thing or two about
organizations, thank you very much.
My fantasy has always been to get into the
Baseball Hall of Fame. Little kids would seek
my autograph and collect my cards. I would
be selected to endorse products people
associate with me, like Polydent and Preparation H. The problem is, I never played professional baseball, let alone was outstanding at it. If you are a member of the HOF,
you get a lifetime pass. In college, I once
tried to use my outstanding knowledge
of baseball to be admitted into the HOF. I
fulfilled my fantasy: I gained admission into
the HOF by purchasing a full-price ticket like
everyone else in line. Maybe one day I will
receive posthumous recognition for my outstanding baseball knowledge. But as Pete
Rose would now say, don’t bet on it.
Let’s all help SIOP by thinking of outstanding dead people. For we need more jolly
good Fellows. And that, nobody can deny.
January 2015, Volume 52, Number 3