International Journal of
Traffic and Transportation Psychology
Volume 1, ISSUE 2
–
www.ijttp.ro
Book review by Teodor Mihaila
THE PSYCHOLOGY IN TRANSPORTATIONS
BY
MIHAELA CHRAIF & MIHAI ANITEI
“Psychology in transportations” is a book which synthesizes theory,
methodology and practice in the respect to transportation psychology. The book
presents the newest methods of assessment and refers to national and worldwide
problems in this particular domain. The book addresses students of psychology,
who study the phenomena of transportations assessment, but also practitioners,
being a fresh source of information.
The book begins with an extensive history of transportation psychology, it
continuous with questionnaires and assessment methods used in psychology
assessment for recruiting and selecting personnel and for periodical assessment in
the workplace.
The first chapter talks about the history of transportation psychology
internationally and in Romania, presenting the most common methods of
transportation assessment of 20th century. In the United States of America,
assessment in transportation was regulated in the beginning of the 1910th, when
assessment of personnel in public transportation was implemented like a safety
measure in preventing accidents. In France, the beginning of transportations
assessment was implemented as a prevention method of accidents in the air field.
The same measure has taken in Russia, where there was a need to evaluate military
pilots. In Romania, in 1920 the Aeronautic Centre of Bucharest was founded, being
among the first centers of air transportation assessment in the world.
The second chapter discusses psychological aptitude testing in assessment
and selection of transportation personnel, beginning with the definition of aptitudes
and classification and ending with complex methods of evaluation. In this chapter
the most renowned evaluation tests like the RQ-PLUS or the Vienna Test System
series are presented.
The third chapter refers to assessment of personality in transportation
psychology and describes the most important theories regarding personality. In
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addition, the chapter focuses on the traffic aggression theory, a theory with a huge
impact on unsafe driving. Also in this chapter, Craif and Anitei present world
famous personality questionnaires such as DECAS, BFQ-2 and NEO-PI-R.
The fourth chapter discusses about performance assessment in
transportation psychology, where a series of qualitative and quantitative methods
are described. Beside this series of assessment methods, the chapter present
quantitative and qualitative evaluation sheets with Likert scale and behavior
anchors. Also SWOT analysis in performance assessment, 360○ feedback and
problems which can appear during evaluation are taken into discussion by the
authors.
The fifth chapter presents distractions factors which influence the
performance in transportation. Among the most important factors which influence
the human operator performance are fatigue and sleep deprivation, occupational
stress, psychotropic substances and noise in the workplace, but also impairment
and age. This chapter synthesizes these factors very well, describing the effects of
each and every one of them on the human operator performance.
The last chapter is dedicated to road, naval and air accidents. The most
important cause presented by this chapter, in the case of road accidents is
aggressive driving, which determines violations of traffic regulations. Road
transportation is the most unsafe way of transportation. This chapter also presents
the causes of naval accidents, which are mostly due to faulty management. The
same situation is available for air transport, where 80% of the accidents are caused
by human error.
In the end, we can say that this book discusses the most important
themes of transportation psychology, explaining theoretical and practical problems
which appear in assessment of personnel while at the same time offering solutions
for preventing evaluation errors.
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