Introduction

Applied psychology has a definite public relations problem, especially when the area of application is in organizations. Managers often believe that half of what psychologists know is nothing more than common sense, and that the other half is wrong. This evaluation probably does describe some of the activities of psychologists in organizations, but we believe it does not describe the state of the art in Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychology. At its best, I/O psychology represents the successful application of basic scientific findings to practical problems. At their worst, I/O and other areas of applied psychology represent nonscientific guesswork on the part of people who should know better. The integration of science and practice is a critical issue in evaluating applications of psychology, and is especially relevant to the field of I/O psychology.