I/O Psychology in the Movie Office Space

2054 Words9 Pages
Most movies are a reflection of society and the type of interpersonal interactions that shape human lives, although they are typically revamped to fit a certain genre. In the movie Office Space, the satirical twist is on the human experience of the work environment. It is a comical depiction of how coworkers interact with each other and how they endure stressful job-related situations that we can all relate to. There are psychological concepts represented in this movie from various fields of psychology. This paper, however, will focus on evaluating and analyzing the following four constructs related to I/O psychology: McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, stress, groupthink, and
…show more content…
Attempts are made to keep employees focused by frequent staff meetings, but people only partially pay attention as managers announce company developments. Management’s perceived need to continually push employees to act right is apparent in the way they handles the missing cover page on Peter’s TPS report. Stress To study stress in the work place, researchers often measure the existing stressors being dealt with by employees. The stressors may be either physical or psychological demands to which an individual responds and, if chronic or persistent, can lead to negative reactions or responses called strains.
Physical task stressors include excessive heat, noise, and light, as well as job demands such as a time-pressured work pace, heavier workload, and the amount of hours worked. Psychological stressors include interpersonal conflict, role stressors, work-family conflict, and emotional labor, which is the regulation of one’s emotions to meet job or organizational demands.
Another psychological stressor that may have the most influence in determining an individual’s response to a situation is a lack of control or predictability, which is related to the amount of autonomy an employee perceives in controlling how and when they perform the tasks of their job.
(Landy & Conte, 2009) Stress may result in negative behavioral, psychological, or physiological consequences and the effects of multiple stressors can be cumulative. Absenteeism, accidents,

More about I/O Psychology in the Movie Office Space

Open Document