Industrial–organizational psychology: "Open thy ears O house of Israel."

Explores the relationship between industrial–organizational psychology and common sense from several approaches. First, literature is reviewed pertaining to the inherent problems of developing a science of human behavior in the context of commonly held beliefs about the subject. Second, the results of a study are presented that indicate that 359 nonpsychologists (college students and managerial groups) were able to intuit the findings of recent research in industrial–organizational psychology and, therefore, that at least a portion of this discipline is commonsensical. Finally, it is suggested that the commonsense character of the discipline may be traced to matters about which psychologists have received repeated warnings in the past. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)