The availability of the personal computer (PC), statistical software, and the Internet has had undeniable effects on I-O psychology.  Without such technological advances, for instance, there’d be no virtual teams, no computer-adapted testing, and no cyberloafing.  To better appreciate the impact of technology on the current state of our discipline, it’s helpful to reflect on the technology used in the recent past.  In preparing this installment of the History Corner, we interviewed nine seasoned I-O psychologists: Terry Beehr, Ilene Gast, Lawrence Hanser, Milton Hakel, Norman Peterson, Susan Reilly, Neal Schmitt, Paul Thayer, and Lauress Wise.  We asked them each to describe the technology they used during their early careers to conduct data analysis, and we asked them to reflect on how technological changes have affected the way in which I-O psychologists conduct research.  In the following sections we discuss how calculators, early computers, and PCs were used “back in the day” to conduct data analysis.  We then discuss how I-O psychologists wrote their research reports prior to the advent of PCs and word processing programs.

In the July 2015 TIP, the SIOP Professional Practice Committee (PPC) presented the first of a series of articles reporting the results of the 2015 Practitioner Needs Survey that the PPC conducted between March and April 2015. The objective of the survey was to gather information about current needs of I-O practitioners to provide insights to SIOP leadership and committees (e.g., PPC, licensure, visibility) about developing future initiatives. In addition, the survey was designed to collect information that could be compared to the results of the 2008 Practitioner Needs Survey in order to examine progress on issues identified in 2008.

Graduate school is often a stressful period for budding industrial-organizational psychologists. One strategy for managing stress, both in graduate school and beyond, is the mindfulness-based intervention (MBI). This article examines the potential efficacy of MBIs for the graduate student population within a stressor-strain framework. First, we detail common graduate student stressors, then we define mindfulness and provide examples of mindfulness exercises. Next, we review meta-analytic evidence for the effectiveness of MBIs in reducing strain in broader populations. Last, we provide resources for beginning a mindfulness practice. Although this article focuses primarily on the graduate student population, the lessons learned from MBI research apply to most professional populations as well.

Research on personality, especially using the five-factor model (FFM; McCrae & Costa, 1987), has contributed greatly to industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology. In particular, this is because personality traits, especially Conscientiousness, are found to be valid predictors of job performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000) while having relatively less adverse impact than other selection tools, such as cognitive ability tests (Ployhart & Holtz, 2008). Although the FFM is the most widely used personality model, other traits have been studied in the context of work and have been found to correlate with key variables such as job performance and job satisfaction. Such variables include need for achievement (McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1976), core self-evaluations (Judge & Bono, 2001), and goal orientation (Phillips & Gully, 1997). As a result, it is of great interest to organizations to be able to understand the personality of its applicants and its incumbents, and often such an examination of traits goes beyond the FFM.

Here are some not-to-be missed highlights from the SIOP 2016 conference! (Please see the January 2016 issue of TIP and the online program for more comprehensive descriptions.)