The Hawthorne effect is a term that refers to the habit or tendency of some people to work harder and perform better when they are participating in an experiment.
The term is often used to indicate that individuals modify their behavior because of the attention they are getting from the researchers. It is over and above the manipulation of any kind of independent variables.
In the field of psychology, the Hawthorne effect has found a lot of relevance. It finds its place on the books of industrial and organizational psychology. Over the years researchers have modified their opinion and emphasize that the effects of the study may be overstated.
Background of the Hawthorne effect
The inception of the Hawthorne effect goes back to the 1950’s. Prominent researchers Henry A. Landeberger coined this term when they were analyzing the experiments, they had conducted three decades ago, in the 1920’s and 30’s
The term gets its name from the location where the experiment had taken place, Hawthorne in Illinois. The western Electric Hawthorne works electric company had outsourced this work to understand if there was a relationship between productivity and work environments. The fundamental purpose of the research was examining how the different aspects of work environment such as lighting, the timing of breaks and the length of workday had on the productivity of the workers.
In this most famous experiment, the focus of the study was to figure out the increasing and decreasing amount of light that the workers received and the way it would impact their productivity during shifts. In the main study, the employee productivity appeared to increase when the experiment was on but decreased after the experiment.
When the researchers in the original study discovered that any kind of change that was made in the experimental condition, ultimately led to increase in the productivity. Even in adverse conditions such as working hours increases or illumination decreased the productivity seemed to be on escalation only. It was then analysed and concluded that the response of the workers was based on the increased focus by the supervisors. It clearly concluded that the productivity went due to the increased attention and not the changes in the experiment variable.
Consequently, Landsberger came to ahead and coined the term Hawthorne effect, which is the short-term improvement in the performance cause by monitoring the respondent or the workers. These findings were quickly accepted and adopted by researchers and managers. Since then, the term remains widely in use to describe the increased productivity due to participation.
4 phases of the Hawthorne experiments
- Illumination Experiments: Illumination experiments were taken up to find out the different levels of illumination affecting the level of productivity. The hypothesis of the study was that with increased illumination, productivity goes up. In the preliminary stage of the study, a group of workers were chosen for the study and kept in separate group. One of the groups was made to perform in changing intensity of illumination. This group was termed as experimental group because the experiments were being conducted on the group. The other group was termed as control group where the level of intensity was kept standard. The outcome observed was that as the level of intensity of illumination increased in the experimental group, performance went up in both the groups. Even when the illumination was dropped in the experimental group, the production kept going upwards in both the groups. The experimental group showed decreased production only when the illumination was dropped to the level of moonlight. This so happened because light went down much below the level of being normal. These observations made the researchers think that there was something other than just illumination that was affecting the level of productivity. Since this was the preliminary stage, it was understood that human factor is important in determining productivity but which of the aspect was affecting, it was difficult to know. To understand this further, the experiment was taken to another level.
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Relay Assembly Test Room experiments:
In the second level of assignments, relay test room experiments were designed to find out the effect of varying job conditions on the job productivity as the illumination experiments could not establish the relationship between productivity and illumination. For this purpose, the researchers set up relay assembly test rooms and two girls were identified for the purpose of experimentation. These girls were further asked to choose other girls who could be co -workers. The work was concerning the assembly of telephone relays. Each of the comprised number of parts that the girls had to assemble to create the final output or the finished product. The output was directly related to the consistency, speed, and continuity with which the girls performed. The experiment. In the initial stage of the experiment, several changes were brought in the sequence of the task. Each change ranged from four to twelve weeks. There was an observer allocated to supervise on the girls to monitor their performance. At the starting of introducing a new change, the girls were consulted and they could give their opinion to the supervisor about what they thought about the brought in change. In some case they were even given the liberty to take decisions in matter that were concerning to them. The resultant outcome of this was that, when the incentive of the girls was changed to the performance based on the output of the other 5 co workers in the experiment rather than the employees of the whole organization, the productivity shot up. The rest breaks, of 10 minutes, both in the morning as well as the evening session had a positive impact on the productivity. When the breaks introduced were made shorter but the count of breaks were increased, the productivity went down as according to the girls, the frequent breaks broke the rhythm of the workflow. Like this, few more changes were introduced and their impact on the productivity were studied. In the final stages of the study, it was understood that as each change was introduced, the absenteeism went down, morale increased and less and less supervision was needed. At this stage, the researchers reversed all the changes brought in and went back to the previous position of working. However, what came as a surprise was that productivity increased rather than going down. It brough a lot of redirections in thinking, and the conclusion was that the productivity was not increasing with the positive physical changes but the change in the attitude of the girls towards their work group. They built a sense of belongingness and stability when they were given better working conditions and the freedom to make decisions. -
Mass Interview Programme:
From the year 1928-30, about 20,000 interviews were conducted and the purpose was to understand the attitude and opinion of the employees towards the company, supervisor, its policies, wages, and other factors. In the beginning, these interviews were conducted with a lot of direct questions with yes, no answers. This kind of response method did not help in going to the root cause of the problem and later the non-directive approach was adopted and it offered a lot of insight into the human behavior element of the society. During the interview, it was discovered that the workers behavior is influenced by group behavior and because this conclusion was not all inclusive, it was necessary to conduct another level of experiment to go to the depth of the method and get more conclusive results. -
Bank Wiring Observation Room Experiment:
In this experiment, the impact of small groups on individuals was studied. In this experiment, a group of 14 male workers were formed into a small work group. The men were engaged in the assembly of terminal banks for the use in telephone exchanges. The Hawthorne experiments clearly indicated that the motivation for a man at work is more than the economic needs getting satisfied. Man is a social being and social security, validation, praise, attitude, and security are also significant in shaping the productivity and output that an employee can deliver in his workplace.
Placement of Hawthorne effect in real life examples
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Medicine and Healthcare: In the field of anxiety and mental health issues, it was found that people with patients who has more frequent visits by their healthcare professionals happened to recover better and feel good in comparison, minimal follow up didn’t show that kind of recovery rate.
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Academics and schools: Research observations where students were being monitored for their performance, such as washing hands or doing their homework regularly, it was observed that they showed improved performance under observation and the performance standards dipped down when the observation was withdrawn.
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Offices and workplace: An employee tend to exhibit his best performance when he is under observation by the supervisor and tends to work less hard or with perfection when he is not being watched.
The Hawthorne effect surely has an influence of the behavior of the participants, however, there are other factors that can also play a role in changing the performance of the observant and show an increment in the performance. Some of these factors could be:
- Demand Characteristics: Sometimes, researchers give subtle cues that give indications to participants about what is expected from them or what the researcher is hoping to find in the result. Consequently, subjects will alter their behavior to validate the researcher’s hypothesis.
- Novelty Effects: The feeling of newness at the initial stage of the experiment can make the participants enthusiastic about the performance. However, as the experiment continues, it can wean off and the participants go down to their usual level of performance.
- Feedback: In the situations thar involve worker’s productivity, increased focus from experimenters can result in better performance feedback and this can lead to improvement in feedback.
While, it is the truth that the Hawthorne effect is overstated, the term has its relevance as a general explanation for the psychological factors that can affect the way people behave in experiment.
How to mitigate the Hawthorne effect:
In order to ensure that the outcomes of the experiments are not impacted by biases such as Hawthorne effect, it is essential to mitigate them.What is in the hands of researchers to do the same?
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Experiments should be conducted in natural settings: in order to eliminate or minimize demand characteristics and all other sources that lead to any kind of experimental bias, the most important thing to do it to use naturalistic observation technique. This is however not possible and the settings have to be manipulated to suit the experiment requirements many a times.
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Responses should be anonymous: Bias can be further combatted by making the responses completely confidential or anonymous, at least. This can encourage the participants to be their natural self and not alter their behavior with the fear of being judged.
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Build familiarity with the people in the study: it is a possibility that people might not alter their behavior when they are familiar with the persons conducting the experiment and when they know that the person watching over them is not a stranger to them, they may not be tempted to alter their behavior.
Many of the Hawthorne effect findings have got mixed reviews and opinions over the years and they have been found to be overstated or erroneous. Despite this the term has got a wide application in different fields such as psychology, economics, business etc.
More recent findings support the idea that these effects do happen, but the question remains about the impact of these. Today, the term is still commonly used to refer the changed behavior of participants when under observation in an experiment.
As a result of the Hawthorne effect, the internal and external validity of your research may be threated because what is being observed by the researcher, may not be a representation of normal behavior. This effect is often also termed as observer effect as it is closely connected to observer bias.
Hawthorne effect is a subtype of performance bias because the pre requisite for this effect to occur is that the participant must be aware that they are under observation.
