Early 20th century rural life
Early 20th century city life

Industrialization
I/O psychology didn’t appear out of no where, natural growth of times major influences: economic, social, and psychological
Economically: industrial boom around turn of 20th century — promoting interest in efficiency
Societal: growing acceptance of theory of evolution changed way people thought of communities and societies
Protestant work ethic: supported capitalism (became basis of society)
Psychology: undergoing change, accepting scientific method

Frederick W. Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor was primarily interested in removing all inefficiency from the workplace, and he targeted his efforts toward the manual worker, aiming to increase their productivity and reduce their judgment. As a result he invented scientific management, which was based on four principles (Beder, 2000, p98):

The most efficient way of doing a task should be worked out scientifically;
Workers should be carefully selected and trained to do the work in this way;
Workers should do their work under the close supervision and control of management and be paid a bonus for doing exactly what they say;
Management should take over the planning and thinking part of the work.

Taylor considered the manual worker to be stupid, slow and unintelligent, with little or no thinking abilities. The ‘thinking’ part of any job, he claimed, was for intelligent, educated people, and the workers’ job was to “follow instructions about what to do, how to do it and how much time to spend doing it” (Beder, 2000, p98). His approach removed thought, skill, pride and enjoyment from the work process, breaking up tasks and leaving the worker with only the bare necessities. Beder (2000) states that Taylor “removed the more desirable and challenging parts of the work and made it monotonous, tedious and unremittingly boring” (p99).