Effects of personality, perceptual difficulty and pacing of a task on productivity, job satisfaction, and physiological stress.
The relative psychological, physiological, and performance advantages and disadvantages of utilizing machine-paced and self-paced work were examined by having 12 subjects perform a marking-stapling task at 2 levels of perceptual difficulty and under 2 pacing conditions for 30 min. each. (a) 3 subjects who on the personality tests were identified as introverted, reserved, and trusting preferred to work in the machine-paced condition, while 9 subjects who were identified as extroverted, outgoing and suspicious preferred the self-paced condition, (b) the performance errors in machine-paced operation were 372% higher than for self-paced work, and (c) there were no differences between machine-paced and self-paced work on physiological variables, except for sinus arrhythmia for the task with high perceptual load, and quantity of production.
D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001146:Arrhythmia, Sinus / Q000523:psychology; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D007221:Industry; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D012119:Respiration; D014796:Visual Perception