Increasing I-O Visibility

By Emily Soldberg, Valtera   

Increasing the visibility of I-O psychology is critical to the future of our field. The visibility committee at SIOP has been working on various initiatives to increase visibility to different audiences (e.g., students, HR/business, general public) and would like to hear your thoughts on any (or all) of the following:

• Ideas for increasing the visibility of SIOP or I-O psychology in general.

• What are the barriers to the visibility of I-O psychology?
• How can we determine when we have achieved a sufficient amount of visibility?

• In which group(s) should we primarily focus our visibility efforts (e.g., HR, business leaders, students, general public)? 

Comments

[Paul. G Rodrigues]

More than the broad exposure of I/O, we must scientifically ensure the benefits of I/O psychology...

[Paul Hebert]

Tell me a story. How has I-O impacted a company in the form of a story.

What I find in most of the I-O stuff I read (which I'm sure isn't as much as you all) is that it is very scientific - working very hard to prove the "science" of psychology. However, that doesn't scale, that doesn't transfer, that doesn't go viral.

Stories do. Stories are what people remember and pass on.

Want I-O to become relevant - turn the science into a story - then we can tell it!

[Richard N. Landers]

I will add that this has actually been discussed across the OB and I/O blogosphere recently - see http://jungleblog.foresightint.com/2009/04/17/is-psychology-a-science-other-people-speak-up/ for a list of discussions.

[Raquel Hodge]

Starting from a very broad perspective (and in agreement with Mr. Landers), it doesn't seem that people understand the field of psychology in general. Psychologists are often labeled as "therapists" and not "scientists". Until the field of psychology is seen as more of a scientific discipline, trying to increase the visibility of I-O psychology may be ineffective and essentially more difficult. The problem requires an interdisciplinary effort.

[Richard N. Landers]

Whatever is done, it needs to be at a huge scale. The public perception of psychology in general is most often as pseudoscience, and that often trickles down to I/O. Has it been considered that this problem may be bigger than our field alone? That investing in a cooperative effort across areas about scientific psychology (and its many variations) might be a better use of resources?