TNTLab at University of Minnesota

New Post! Counts and Demographics of IO Psychology Doctoral Degrees ()

Counts and Demographics of IO Psychology Doctoral Degrees - NeoAcademic Have you ever wondered about the demographics of IO Psychology PhDs? The National Science Foundation recently released its report from the 2021 Survey of Earned Doctorates, which summarizes trends in doctoral education across US universities. There are a few interesting tidbits about the IO psycholo...

When AI is applied to management, especially hiring, we
must better evaluate claims made about how the AI is "fair."

"Fair" is defined different ways by different people, and it's easy to talk past each other. The differences between how a job candidate, a psychologist, a computer scientist, a statistician, an ethicist, a legal system, and a society define "fairness" and "bias" can be vast.

In such a high-stakes context as hiring, using the same word to mean different things causes a lot of problems. It creates anger and spite. It breeds mistrust. "I think this is fair but you don't; you must be wrong! You must be evil!"

We can't afford to make this mistake when people's jobs are on the line. Thinking so narrowly holds everyone back. It is bad for job candidates, and it is bad for business.

This problem is much of what led Tara Behrend and TNTLAB PI Richard Landers to explore the concept of fairness across conceptual and disciplinary lenses, to develop standards for "psychological audits," as published in this new open-access article to appear in the flagship journal of the APA, American Psychologist:https://doi.apa.org/fulltext/2022-30899-001.pdf

A psychological audit is necessary any time an AI purveyor makes a psychological claim, like:

1) AI is claimed to measure something about a person, like their "hireability" or "potential" or "leadership skill."
2) AI is claimed to make predictions about a person, like their "future job performance" or "turnover risk."
3) AI is claimed to make meaningful decisions about a person, like if they will directed towards a leadership pipeline or need unique training and development.

Do not let your own biases about "bias" mislead you. There are many, many ways to evaluate whether a particular AI system is "fair," and your personal definition is probably a by-product of the field you were trained in rather than any "objective" truth about what that word actually means. In reality, there is no "true" definition of either fairness or bias.

Thus, anyone making a claim about fairness and bias in AI must be transparent about what they mean by those words. In turn, you need to be open to learning about what they mean by it, so you can evaluate what claims they are really making - and more importantly, what they are leaving unsaid and untested.

It will only be through transparency and open exchange of data and evaluative reporting that we can have any confidence in claims about what AI can do.

https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/meaningful-standards-auditing-high-stakes-artificial-intelligence

Meaningful Standards for Auditing High-Stakes Artificial Intelligence In response to claims of unfairness and bias in tools used in hiring, college admissions, predictive policing, health interventions, and more, the University of Minnesota (U of M) recently developed a new set of auditing guidelines for AI tools.

New Post! A New List of I-O Psychology Podcasts, just in time for the end of the SIOP 2021 conference.

A New List of I-O Psychology Podcasts - NeoAcademic We’re currently in the midst of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s annual conference, which as appropriate to a pandemic, is mostly via Zoom. Over three thousand people are participating. Another side effect of the pandemic, one that I did not expect but realized because ...

New Post! Hiring an NSF Research Project Manager to Start Immediately ()

Hiring an NSF Research Project Manager to Start Immediately - NeoAcademic Direct link to the application and formal job ad: https://hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/339848 As part of a recently-funded US National Science Foundation project in which we will be building an online virtual interviewing platform, my laboratory will be hiring a part-time project manager with work to do....

Our upcoming Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior article explores how and why IO psychology treats technology so badly, and how much harm this does to the development of practical theory.

The short version: a LOT.

If you want to skip my nostalgic rambling, there's a free link to the article (PDF or text) at the end of the linked post!

Psychology, Technology, and Incomplete Theory - NeoAcademic Although I’m now an industrial-organizational psychologist, that was not always the dream. As early as 5 years old, I wanted to do something involving computers. At that time, this mostly involved making my name appear in pretty flashing colors using BASICA. But that interest eventually evolved in...

I was tired of hunting down all of these links every time someone asked, so I put together this list of Trustworthy I-O Master’s and PhD. Program Rankings (https://buff.ly/36umdQe) and by trustworthy I mean I included rankings that are based upon empirical data, where rankers presented a transparent methodology, and where I could see an argument for construct validity (whether I agreed with it or not).

That also means I didn't include any junk IO rankings intended to misdirect people into sign up to complete online IO master's degrees at for-profit institutions, which unfortunately now make up most of the primary Google search results when you look for IO rankings!

If you know of any undergrad thinking about a program, direct them here! I'm also going to keep updating this as new rankings are produced (which seems to happen every 2-4 years, at least recently).

Trustworthy I-O Master's and PhD. Program Rankings - NeoAcademic Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational PsychologyStarting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research ExperienceStarting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting RecommendationsStarting Senior Year: Where to Apply | Traditional ...

A big congratulations to both Sebastian Marin and Elena Auer for passing their doctoral candidacy exams over the last two weeks! Two more dissertations incoming shortly!!

The Testing New Technologies in Learning, Assessment, and Behavior (TNTLAB) at the University of Minnesota is HIRING a remote, part-time research project manager ASAP for a National Science Foundation funded project on virtual interviewing! If you participated in a research lab when you were an undergrad but are still on the fence about grad school, this is perfect for you!

Please check it out and forward to any talented recent graduates you know! The position also comes with access to all of the research infrastructure of the University of Minnesota, so if you're interested in building up your vita, this is a good opportunity for that too!

We particularly want to encourage applications from people in under-represented and systemically disadvantaged groups! Please apply!

https://buff.ly/2EV6nmT

We've done it - Tara Behrend and I have successfully hosted the first-ever livestreaming of a SIOP conference! If you missed any part of our four hours of discussion and commentary on Virtual SIOP 2020, you can still check it out on YouTube for the next couple of weeks. We will probably be pulling it offline after that, so watch it quick if you're interested!

Let's Conference: A SIOP 2020 Livestreaming Event Come along for the ride as Drs. Richard Landers and Tara Behrend participate in the SIOP 2020 Conference - live! This is just one small thing we can do to fe...

It's official, we have a time, and we have a URL! Come to YouTube Live on Monday, June 22, starting at 2PM EDT to take part in the sweet SIOP 2020 conferencey goodness.

More details here: http://neoacademic.com/2020/06/15/lets-conference-a-siop-2020-livestreaming-event-on-june-22/

Direct link to the event here (be sure to set a reminder on YouTube!): https://youtube.com/c/richardlanders/live

New Post! "Let’s Conference: A SIOP 2020 Livestreaming Event" will be on the afternoon of June 22, free to attend (https://buff.ly/30K1but).

Be prepared for some mild roasting and stimulating intellectual discussion or some approximation thereof by Tara Behrend and me!

New Post! Avoiding Wrist Pain and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome During COVID-19 Isolation

If you've ever had a twinge of wrist pain while typing, you're on the road to bigger problems - fortunately, the most serious of these are easy to avoid with 3 free changes you can make to your workspace now and 3 sets of products - vertical mice, split mechanical keyboards with horizontal lifters, and wrist rests - that will set you back on the road to wrist health.

Avoiding Wrist Pain and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome During COVID-19 Isolation - NeoAcademic If there’s one thing that white-collar workers around the world suddenly have in common because of COVID-19, it’s that we are very suddenly tied to our keyboards, even more so than before. And some of us were very tied to our keyboards! Unfortunately, as you probably suspected, sitting in front ...