OB & Psychology in

Management
Introduction to Psychology in management
Unit 1
Activity: "The Leadership Mindset
Journey"
• Step 1: Pre-Class Preparation
• Divide the students into small groups.
• Assign each group a well-known leader from the business world. These
leaders could come from diverse industries and backgrounds.
• Step 2: In-Class Activity
• Start the class with a brief discussion about the qualities of effective leaders.
Ask students to share their perceptions of what makes a great leader.
• Provide each group with a research toolkit e.g., YouTube
• Step 3: Group Presentations
• Step 4: Reflective Discussion
What is management?
• In psychology, the term "management" typically refers to the process
of effectively organizing, planning, coordinating, and controlling
resources, tasks, and activities to achieve specific goals within an
individual's or an organization's context.
• Psychological management often involves understanding and
optimizing human behavior, cognition, and emotions to enhance
overall performance, well-being, and outcomes.
What is psychology?
• Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. It
seeks to understand and explain how individuals and groups think,
feel, act, and interact with their environment.
• Psychology encompasses a wide range of topics, including emotions,
cognition, perception, motivation, personality, social interactions,
development, mental health, and more.
What is Management Psychology
• Management psychology is a subfield of industrial-organizational psychology which aims
to help managers, supervisors, and leaders to have a clearer and deeper know-how of
group behaviors in the workplace.
• This discipline particularly investigates
• performance efficiency,
• job stress,
• prevention and control of employees’ harmful psychological patterns,
• motivational forces,
• job satisfaction,
• conflict resolution,
• professional ethics,
• cultural diversity,
• personality differences, and
• other significant factors in workplace settings.
Role of Psychology in Business &
Management
• Business is multifaceted, what is common across all the areas are
people
• The psychology of the share holders helps decide whether the
business is for profit or has a social objective.
• The psychology of the employees is particularly difficult to
explain since all employees are at different levels of the
hierarchy.
• Consumer psychology is another very important aspect
• Supplier psychology helps us negotiate for fair rates which in
return affects the profits of the organisation.
5 Major Psychological Theories

Behavioral Cognitive Humanistic

Theories Theories Theories

Psychodynamic Biological
Theories Theories
Classical conditioning
• Conditioned stimulus: This is what the neutral stimulus becomes after
training (i.e., the metronome was the conditioned stimulus after Pavlov
trained the dogs to respond to it)
• Unconditioned stimulus: A stimulus that produces an automatic response
(i.e., the food was the unconditioned stimulus because it made the dogs
automatically salivate)
• Conditioned response (conditioned reflex): A learned response to previously
neutral stimulus (i.e., the salivation was a conditioned response to the
metronome)
• Unconditioned response (unconditioned reflex): A response that is
automatic (i.e., the dog's salivating is an unconditioned response to the food)
Behaviorist Perspective
• Behaviorism is different from most other approaches because they view people (and
animals) as controlled by their environment and specifically that we are the result of
what we have learned from our environment.
• The behaviorist perspective is concerned with how environmental factors (called
stimuli) affect observable behavior (called the response).
• The behaviorist perspective proposes two main processes whereby people learn from
their environment: namely classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical
conditioning involves learning by association, and operant conditioning involves
learning from the consequences of behavior.
• Classical conditioning (CC) was studied by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov.
Though looking into natural reflexes and neutral stimuli he managed to condition
dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell through repeated associated with the sound of
the bell and food.
Behaviorist Perspective
• B.F. Skinner investigated operant conditioning of voluntary and involuntary
behavior. Skinner felt that some behavior could be explained by the person’s
motive. Therefore, behavior occurs for a reason, and the three main behavior
shaping techniques are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and
punishment.
• Behaviorism is the scientific study of observable behavior working on the
basis that behavior can be reduced to learned S-R (Stimulus-Response) units.
• Behaviorism has been criticized in the way it under-estimates the complexity
of human behavior. Many studies used animals which are hard to generalize
to humans, and it cannot explain, for example, the speed in which we pick up
language. There must be biological factors involved.
Humanistic Perspective
• Humanistic psychology is a perspective that emphasizes looking at the whole person, and the
uniqueness of each individual. Humanistic psychology begins with the existential assumptions that
people have free will and are motivated to achieve their potential and self-actualize.
• Humanistic psychology is a perspective that emphasizes looking at the whole individual and
stresses concepts such as
• free will- the power or ability to make your own decisions about your life rather than being controlled by any outside influence
• self-efficacy- an individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance
attainments
• self-actualization- to realize fully one's potential.
How to Apply Humanistic Psychology

• Discover your own strengths

• Develop a vision for what you want to achieve
• Consider your own beliefs and values
• Pursue experiences that bring you joy and develop your skills
• Learn to accept yourself and others
• Focus on enjoying experiences rather than just achieving goals
• Keep learning new things
• Pursue things that you are passionate about
• Maintain an optimistic outlook
Cognitive Perspective
• The cognitive theory definition asserts that the way people behave is a
product of the information they gather externally and the way they
interpret that information internally.
• Cognitive theory, also known as cognitive psychology or cognitive
science, is a psychological and theoretical framework that focuses on
understanding how people think, learn, remember, make decisions,
and solve problems.
Cognitive Perspective

• The cognitive perspective is concerned with “mental” functions such as

memory- store information for late usage, perception- ability to receive
information using visual and audio senses and processing it in many
ways, attention- allows one to attend to one specific environment aspect
while disregarding others, etc. It views people as being similar to
computers in the way we process information (e.g., input-process-
output).

• This had led cognitive psychologists to explain that memory comprises

of three stages: encoding (where information is received and attended
to), storage (where the information is retained) and retrieval (where the
information is recalled).
Psychodynamic Perspective
• Given by Sigmund Freud.
• The psychodynamic approach is based on the assumptions that personality forms
during the first few years of life and that the ways in which parents or other
caregivers interact with children have a long-lasting impact on children’s
emotional states have guided parents, educators, clinicians, and policy-makers for
many years.
• He also believed that people have little free will to make choices in life. Instead,
our behavior is determined by the unconscious mind and childhood experiences.

• Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, explained the human mind as like an

iceberg, with only a small amount of it being visible, that is our observable
behavior, but it is the unconscious, submerged mind that has the most,
underlying influence on our behavior.
ICEBERG Theory

According to Freud (1915), the unconscious mind is the primary

source of human behavior. Like an iceberg, the most important part of
the mind is the part you cannot see. Our feelings, motives, and
decisions are powerfully influenced by past experiences and stored in
the unconscious.

• Most of the content of the unconscious is unacceptable or

unpleasant and could cause feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict if it
became conscious.
• For example, hysteria is an example of a physical symptom that has
no physical cause though the ailment is just as real as if it had, but
rather is caused by some underlying unconscious problem.
• The unconscious contains all sorts of significant and disturbing
material which we need to keep out of awareness because they are
too threatening to acknowledge fully.

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with

one-seventh of its bulk above water.
ICEBERG Theory
• The preconscious contains thoughts and feelings that a
person is not currently aware of, but which can easily
be brought to consciousness. It exists just below the
level of consciousness, before the unconscious mind.
• This is what we mean in our everyday usage of the
word available memory. For example, you are
presently not thinking about your mobile telephone
number, but now it is mentioned you can recall it with
ease.
• The conscious mind contains all of the thoughts,
memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware
at any given moment. This is the aspect of our mental
processing that we can think and talk about rationally.
This also includes our memory, which is not always
part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily and
brought into awareness.
Freud's Theory of the Id, Ego, & Superego
• Freud came up with a second topographic model that explains certain
aspects within the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious parts of
the mind and has to do with a person's personality. These parts are id,
which resides in the unconscious part of our mind, ego, which mainly
resides in the preconscious and conscious parts of the mind, and
superego, which resides in all three parts.
• What are the id, ego, and superego?
• The id, ego, and superego are three agencies that make up your personality.
The id is the inherited part of the personality; the ego is who you are, or self;
and the superego is governed by morals and societal compasses.
What is the id?
• The id is the division of the psyche that is completely unconscious. This is where the drives and needs of a
person come from. They are driven by instinct, and the psychic energy comes from here. Since it deals
with basic instincts, Freud assumed the id is part of the unconscious due to the principles of pleasure,
satisfaction, and gratification. Some other characteristics of the Examples
id are:
• The baby was crying because it was hungry.
• Instinctive and primitive It cried until it was fed.
• Biological, inherited component of your personality • Ritika was at a restaurant, and she was very
thirsty. She was waiting for the server to
• Impulsive
refill her glass. Instead of waiting for the
• Responds to our urges, needs, and desires server to come by, she grabbed her mother's
• Infantile in its function glass of water and drank it.
• Does not change with experience or time • Karan was very hungry but needed to go to
• the grocery store. While he was shopping at
Not affected by reality, logic or the everyday world
the produce section, he grabbed an apple,
• Process thinking, illogical, irrational, and fantasy oriented ate it, and continued shopping.
• Selfish and wishful in nature
What is the Ego?
• The ego is the self as contrasted by another self. Once the ego has developed, it is responsible for mediating
between the unrealistic id and the reality. It uses reality to help the id satisfy its demand and to obtain what the
ego seeks. Much like the id, the ego seeks out pleasure by reducing tension that has been created and avoids
pain. Some other characteristics of the ego are: Examples
•Tanaya was at a restaurant, and she was very
thirsty. She was waiting for the server to refill her
glass. Instead of grabbing her mother's glass of
• Modified by direct influences water, she waited on the server to refill her glass.
• Decision-making component of the personality • Maya was very tired when she got off of work.
When she arrived at her car, she saw it was
• Works by reason blocked by a truck. She saw she had a little room
• Waits for gratification and satisfaction to avoid negative consequences to move her car, but she also knew that if she
damaged the car in any way, it would cause her
• No concept of right or wrong more stress, worry, and money. She found the
owner of the truck and asked him to move it so she
• Something is good as long as there is no harm to self or id could back out.
• Weak compared to the id
• Failure to use the reality principle, will experience anxiety
• Works by rational, realistic, and orientated towards problem solving
What is the Superego?

• The superego is part of the psyche that is partly conscious. It represents the rules of society, functions to
reward and punish through a system of moral attitudes and has a sense of guilt. The development for the
superego happens around ages 3 to 5. Its function is to control the impulses of the id by using the rules of
society, what is forbidden and what is allowed. Some characteristics for the superego are:

Examples
• Incorporates the values and morals of society An example of the superego is a runner, during
• Persuades the ego to use moralistic goals instead of realistic ones a race, who knew they could cut their time and
come in first if they took a short cut. No one
• Strives for perfection
was watching but the runner would feel guilty,
• Consists of two systems: consciousness and ideal self so they decided not to take the short cut.
• Consciousness can punish the ego by using guilt
• Ideal self is an imaginary picture of how and who you ought to be
• Superego can be punished if it does not fit the ideal self
• Ideal self is determined by parental values and how you were raised
• Too high of a standard for the ideal self equals failure
 Behavior can be explained in terms of the inner conflicts of the mind-
Revision

• Personality comprises three parts (i.e., tripartite): the id, ego, and
super-ego. Parts of the unconscious mind (the id and superego) are
in constant conflict with the conscious part of the mind (the ego).

• The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality. It

is the basic instinct, what we are born with, of needs, desires, and
pleasures.
• The ego develops to mediate between the unrealistic id and the
external real world. It is the decision-making component of
personality.
• The superego incorporates society’s values and morals, which are
learned from one’s parents and others. It has two components: the
ego ideal, which sets the standards, and the conscience, which
produces guilt.
Biological Perspective
• This approach within psychology seeks to understand human behavior and mental processes by
examining their underlying biological and physiological factors. This perspective emphasizes the
interaction between biological processes and psychological states, as well as how these factors are
influenced by social and environmental contexts.
• In essence, it acknowledges that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are influenced by the
complex interplay of biology, psychology, and the environment.
• Biological psychology examines the relationship between
• mind and body,
• neural mechanisms, and
• the influence of heredity on behavior.