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

Biography

Robert G. Jones is Professor of Psychology at Missouri State University (MSU). He received his Ph.D. (1992) in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology from The Ohio State University after an earlier career in banking and music. His Bachelor’s degree is from a special program called the Paracollege at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. His concentration was on Renaissance English history and literature, as informed by Classical ethics and epistemology. Not Surprisingly, Queen Elizabeth I is his favorite leader.

During his career as an I/O psychologist, he has dealt with a broad range of research and practice questions, mostly relating to performance assessment, psychometrics, management development, and biases in testing. Dr. Jones’s scholarship centers on applications of emotive perception theory to measurement and management of behavior in individuals and groups. With his students, he has addressed these issues in numerous applied settings, including assessment centers, performance management systems, service training programs, selection tests, and team and leadership development. Understanding how people construe and respond to emotive displays is at the center of this work.

Dr. Jones also has a longstanding passion for issues of discrimination and social identity. This interest arose from his experiences as a member of the Chicago Children’s Choir in the 1960’s, and later as a manger of this group. People’s tendency to leap to conclusions about whether they belong to each others’ groups is a central problem of human behavior, and Bob seeks to understand this tendency and mitigate its more destructive outcomes. Having a musical background also informed his thinking about the sorts of emotive perception that are at the center of the “universal language” of music.

Dr. Jones joined the faculty at SMSU as they were developing a Master’s program in I/O psychology. He has served as Book Review Editor for Personnel Psychology and as Acting Department Head for the SMSU Department of Psychology. Bob lives in Springfield, MO with his Wife and two Sons, and currently serves as an “at large” member of the Springfield City Council.

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.

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. and Parameswaran, G. (Forthcoming). 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.