University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia
The Full Story
Laboratory for Integrative Decision Science
Auburn University's LIDS lab conducts research in the field of Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology. During my time as a research assistant therein I gained a better understanding of how components like job fit, communication, work-life balance, and decision-making strategies contribute to organizational culture. This knowledge can be extrapolated to a variety of workplace settings, including bureaucracies.
Passion vs. Paycheck
The video linked to the left is a recorded presentation created for Auburn University's 2021 Student Research Symposium. The project established a theoretical framework for the relationship between employee engagement and other workplace factors like communication, job fit, and work-life balance. As the practical implications section suggests, employee engagement can impact job satisfaction, performance, turnover, and burnout.
Studying the psychological components and effects of workplace culture allows us to understand motivations behind differences in policy implementation due to administrative discretion. Furthermore, by learning how organizational culture can create deficits in efficacy and efficiency, we become better equipped to overcome it. In essence, if communication, job-fit, and work-life balance are crucial to engagement and, by extension, job performance, perhaps more resources should be devoted to these aspects of employment.
Maximizing and Satisficing
The spreadsheet linked to the right is a sample of the coding conducted in a meta-analysis of I-O psychology literature on 'maximizing' and 'satisficing.' These two psychological concepts reflect a person's decision-making habits. While 'maximizing' describes a person's tendency to examine all facets of all options available to make the 'best' decision, 'satisficing' describes the decision-making strategy guided by the concept of bounded rationality (i.e. a person cannot reasonably consider all options, so they choose one that's 'good enough').
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This project consolidated data from published academic articles on the link between 'maximizing,' 'satisficing,' and psychological concepts like negative affect and emotional exhaustion. By understanding why humans are motivated to satisfice rather than maximize, we can gain a better understanding of decision-making errors in all fields, including public administration. Therefore, a dearth in accountability or efficiency and discrepancies in access to resources can be attributed to concepts like bounded rationality and the need to 'satisfice.'
Personal Research
In the spring of 2020 I was afforded the opportunity to develop a preliminary research project of my own under the guidance of a doctoral student. My interests in psychology and political science motivated me to research the social nature of youth voting. Although data was not collected for this project, I was able to expand my research skillset beyond data analysis and presentation to the realms of research project inception and methods development.
The introduction and literature review were completed during my time with the Laboratory for Integrative Decision Science. The methods section was added later during the fall of 2020 as a component of my course requirements for Research Methods.
