Hawthorne Effect

The Hawthorne effect is a type of behavioral reactivity in which people change an aspect of their behavior simply because they are aware of being observed, rather than because of any real change in their circumstances. The name comes from a series of studies conducted at the Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric plant in Cicero, Illinois, where researchers investigated how conditions such as lighting and rest periods affected worker productivity between 1924 and 1932; the original lighting study, which appeared to show productivity rising with almost any change in conditions, later turned out to rest on a methodologically weak, uncontrolled design, and some scholars now regard parts of the traditional account of the studies as exaggerated or even fictitious. The sociologist Henry Landsberger later proposed that the novelty of being research subjects, and the extra attention that came with it, rather than the specific conditions being tested, produced the temporary rises in workers' output that researchers had observed, an interpretation he named the Hawthorne effect.