Affiliation: Missouri State University
Email: RobertJones@MissouriState.edu

Biography

Robert G. Jones is Professor of Psychology at Missouri State University. He received his Ph.D. (1992) in Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology from The Ohio State University, after earlier careers in banking and music.  His Bachelor’s degree is from a special program called the Paracollege at Saint Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota. There, his concentration was on Renaissance English history, as informed by Classical ethics and epistemology.

During his career as an I/O psychologist, he has dealt with a broad range of research and practice questions, mostly relating to an anomalous finding in the assessment center literature. Here, knowledgeable strangers made remarkably accurate predictions of others’ future life events based on observations of emotive behaviors in structured assessment center simulations. Understanding how people construe and respond to emotive displays is at the center of this work. Specifically, his scholarship centers on applications of emotive perception to measurement and management of behavior in individuals, groups, organizations, and communities.

Publications resulting from this search for answers to the puzzle of assessment center accuracy range from applied questions regarding performance assessment, psychometrics, management development, team selection, and prejudice in organizations, to more basic research on people’s decisions about inclusion, including nepotism, sustainability, and volition. He has addressed these issues with students and colleagues in applied settings, including assessment centers, performance management systems, training programs, selection tests, and team and leadership development.

Dr. Jones also has a longstanding passion for issues of discrimination and social identity. His experiences as a member of the Chicago Children’s Choir in the late 1960’s were formative, as was his Mother’s Romani background.  Managing the naturally occurring human systems that direct us toward excluding people who have important stakes in our decisions is a central problem of human behavior, and Bob seeks to understand this tendency and mitigate its more destructive outcomes. This background has also informed his thinking about the sorts of emotive perception that are at the center of the “universal language” of music and the traditional Roma practice of fortune telling.

Dr. Jones joined the faculty at MSU as they were developing a Master’s program in I/O psychology. He has served as Book Review Editor for Personnel Psychology, as an “at large” member of the Springfield City Council, and as Department Head for the MSU Department of Psychology.  Bob lives in Springfield, MO with his Wife, Cherri, who is a Professor of Library Science.

Jones, R.G. (2015). Psychology of Sustainability: An Applied Perspective. Taylor and Francis/Routledge, NY.

Jones, R.G. & Stout, T. (2015). Policing nepotism and cronyism without losing the value of social connection. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 8(1), 2015. Focal article.

Jones, R.G. (2012, Editor). Nepotism in Organizations. For Division 14, American Psychological Association, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), Frontiers Series. NY: Routledge.

Jones, R.G. & Culbertson, S.S. (2011). Why Performance Management Will Remain Broken: Authoritarian Communication. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 4, 179-180. Commentary.

Wilson, K. & Jones, R.G. (2008). Understanding and Reducing Stereotyping in Performance Appraisals:  Recommendations from the UK. Journal of General Management, 32, Winter, 57-70.

Jones, R.G. & Born, M.Ph. (2008). Assessor constructs in use as the missing component in validation of assessment center dimensions: A critique and directions for research. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 16, 229-238.

Klimoski, R.J. & Jones, R.G. (2008). Intuiting the selection context. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1(3), 352-354. Commentary.

Jones, R.G., Stout, T., Harder, B., Levine, E., Levine, J., & Sanchez, J.I. (2008). Personnel psychology and nepotism: Should we support anti-nepotism policies? The Industrial/Organizational Psychologist, 45(3), 17-20.

Jones, R.G., Chomiak, M., Rittman, A., & Green, T. (2006). Distinguishing motive through perception of emotions. Psichothema, 18, 67-71.

Jones, R.G. and Parameswaran, G. (2005). Predicting the human weather: How differentiation and contextual complexity affect behavior prediction. Chapter in K. Richardson (Ed.), Managing the Complex: Philosophy, Theory, and Applications, I.A.P./I.S.C.E. Managing the Complex book series, vol. 1., Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Jones, R.G., Levesque, C., & Masuda A. (2003). Emotional displays and social identity: Emotional investment in organizations. In Skarlicki, Gilliland, and Steiner (Eds.), Social Values in Organizations. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Jones, R.G. & Rittman, A. (2002). A model of emotional and motivational components of interpersonal interactions in organizations. In N. Ashkanasy, C. Hartel, & W. Zerbe (Eds.), Managing Emotions in the Workplace, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Anderson, L. & Jones, R.G. (2000). Affective, cognitive, and behavioral acceptance of feedback: Individual difference moderators. In N. Ashkanasy, C. Hartel, & W. Zerbe (Eds.), Emotions in Organizational Life. Westport, CT: Quorum.

Jones, R.G., Stevens, M.J., & Fischer, D.L. (2000). Selection in team contexts. In J.F. Kehoe (Ed.), Managing Selection in Changing Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, for SIOP Practitioner Series.

Kirkman, B.L., Jones, R.G., & Shapiro, D.L. (2000). Why do employees resist teams? Examining the resistance barrier to work team effectiveness. International Journal for Conflict Management, 11, 74-92.

Jones, R.G. & Lindley, W. (1998). Issues in the transition to teams. Journal of Business and Psychology, 13, 31-40.

Jones, R.G. (1997). A person perception explanation for validation evidence from assessment centers. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 12, 169-178. Special edition on Assessment Centers.

Jones, R.G. & Whitmore, M.D. (1995). Evaluating developmental assessment centers as interventions. Personnel Psychology, 48(2), 377-388.