The
High Society:
No Numbers
Paul M. Muchinsky*
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
*Unamused, indifferent, or entertained readers can contact the author at
pmmuchin@uncg.edu.
I dont know about you, but Im getting numbered out.
Our profession has this seemingly insatiable appetite for exclusively advancing
knowledge through the presentation of numbers. Lots of numbers. The other day I
grabbed two volumes as I settled back into my chair. One was the latest issue of
a leading journal in our field, the other was my local telephone book. I could
scarcely tell them apart. The telephone book had some yellow and blue pages.
Since the inception of our discipline, we have developed a three-step system for
creating knowledge. First, we think of a concept. Second, we measure it. Third,
we correlate those numbers with numbers from the measurement of some other
concept. Over the years what we have done is to think of new concepts, find new
ways to assign numbers to those concepts, and find new ways to analyze the
numbers. It is time for what they call a paradigm shift. And I mean a big one.
We need a watershed event to herald the new social order. I have selected the
SIOP conference in 2004 to be held in Chicago. At this conference there will be
an absolute and total prohibition on numbers in any form, written or spoken. We
will force ourselves to advance our discipline without any reference to numbers.
And I mean it. The page numbers of the conference program will be printed in
words. Page 32, for example, will be page thirty-two. A session will
not be presented at 1:30, but rather one-thirty oclock, printed
just like one of those fancy wedding invitations. If people want to know your
hotel room number, dont tell them. Its none of their business anyway.
Now for the program. We will present the sum and substance of I-O psychology
through forms of expression civilization has developed, all devoid of numbers.
Here are some examples.
We could have a session on stress presented by a juggler. The juggler would
have long thin sticks on top of which are spinning plates. A lot of them. Just
as the juggler starts spinning the last plate, the first one is about to fall.
The juggler would run from stick to stick, keeping the plates from falling.
Relentlessly. What a powerful image to convey the concept of stress.
The concept of work affect could be presented by an instrumental musical
recital. The dulcet tones of the woodwinds and strings could represent job
satisfaction, while job dissatisfaction could be represented by the harsher
sounds of brass and percussion.
How about a mime doing a presentation on career advancement? Do you know the
classic bit where the mime walks into a glass wall and seemingly cant find
the end of it? Well, just flip this pane horizontally, and you have the
proverbial glass ceiling. Imagine what a good mime could do with this image.
I say we go with sculpture to convey poor person/job congruence. We have a
thick metal plate, like a manhole cover, with a round hole in the middle.
Pounded into the round hole is a square piece of wood. Soft wood, like pine or
balsa. There would be a lot of splinters where the square peg was pounded into
the round hole. The top of the abused peg will have been flattened from
unmerciful pounding, forcing the fit. Get the picture?
Teamwork would be conveyed by a barbershop quartet. Each person in the
quartet would first sing solo, and it wouldnt sound too good. Then a duet,
then a trio, and finally a blending of all four voices. They would make
beautiful music together.
Speaking of singing, how about a presentation on Type II error. The thesis of
the presentation is that Type II error is overwhelmingly underestimated in our
field. It causes us not to see things that are actually there. It is the
authors contention the prevalence of Type I error is totally subservient to
Type II error. The mode for this presentation would be a rap song. The title of
the song would be Master Beta Error. I bet some uptight member of the
Program Committee would vote to censor it.
How about a session on workfamily conflict? Im thinking of an
interpretative dance routine. The dancers would be wearing one of two different
colored outfits, like red or green. Each dancer would have one of those long
20-foot streamers that gets whipped around their head in a circular motion. When
work and family are properly balanced, the two sets of dancers interact
harmoniously, like in one of those Busby Berkeley musical extravaganzas of the
1930s. But when they clash, the dancers and their streamers get all tangled up
with each other.
To convey the concept of differing predictive accuracy, Ill go with
sequential visual images. First a finger painting to convey low clarity. Then a
water color painting, then an oil painting, and finally the highest level of
clarity would be portrayed by a photograph. This would be a low-budget session.
In case you might be thinking SIOP would be renting the services of
professional performers to put on these exhibits and presentations, guess again.
Our own members, us, would be doing all of this stuff. I say if we can learn how
to correlate, we can learn how to juggle, dance, sculpt, sing, or paint. Think
of the new assessment skills the Program Committee would develop in evaluating
submissions.
You think I cant walk the talk? Try this on for size. The topic is
diversity, the mode of presentation is poetry.
Diversity
by Paul Muchinsky
I think that I shall never see
A concept like diversity
A blend of brown and white and black
Should not cause us such grief and flak
Working together young and old
Opens our hearts and stems the cold
The Greeks and Poles knew where they stood
But were friends in my neighborhood
Can we mix both woman and man?
If we try, I know we can
Poems are made by fools like me
This wont get into J.A.P.
Speaking of premier journals, many of you probably think they are too
constipated to ever publish poetry as a means of expression. Wrong. Go to your
library and look up Personnel Psychology. Thats right, Personnel
Psychology. The year was 1975. The journal actually published a four-page
poem.1 Granted it was published at the end of the issue following all
the empirical articles. I bet the editor took some serious heat for devoting
precious journal space to this means of expression. How many times have you read
this citation?
Mayer, S. E., & Jorgenson, D. O. (1975). The song of a consultant. Personnel
Psychology, 28, 389392.
I say if weve done it once, we can do it again. If we publish enough
poems, someone could meta-analyze the number of beats per line in I-O poetry.
1Im not a conspiracy theorist, but its tempting. The existence of this publication has been expunged from electronic databases. I retrieved it from a manual search of the journal in my library. Fortunately, I still have a good memory and I knew where to look.
I am all too familiar with the quantitative types in our discipline. Not only
do they dominate how we think and what we do, they are downright sneaky people.
I wouldnt put it past them to find a way to circumvent the prohibition on
numbers at SIOP 2004. And they would be real clever about it. For example, under
the guise of presenting an oral history on dysfunctional means of stress
reduction, one of these crafty people would say something like this: Too bad
he won a prize for gluttony after he ate the whole pie. That sentence may
sound innocent enough, but it actually contains the numbers 2, 1, 4, 8, and 3.14
(pi). We must remain steadfast in our resolve for a paradigm shift. The Numbers
Police must always be watching and listening.
SIOP Two Thousand and Four. No numbers. Pass it on.
October 2002 Table
of Contents | TIP Home
| SIOP Home