Understanding the Hawthorne Effect and What It’s All About
Think about a time that you were at work and you saw a supervisor come near you. Was your immediate reaction to work harder or seem as if you were being more productive than you are? This same logic can be applied to people being studied for the sake of research, and it’s this thinking that coined the term ‘Hawthorne effect’.
The term actually relates to those who are being studied for the purpose of research, but as many people have yet to experience this you can easily see how it could happen when anyone at all is watching what you’re doing. It’s believed that being supervised for the purpose of research can alter your behavior, and the experiments that took place at Hawthorne proved exactly that.
Although there have been criticisms of this theory in modern times, it still offers a valid anecdote that is used in modern research and psychology. We’re here to look a little further into where the term came, the original experiments which noted its presence, and what modern criticisms there’s been on it.
What Is the Hawthorne Effect?
Hawthorne was the name of the place where certain experiments were done, and it’s used to refer to the tendency people have to work more efficiently and productively when they’re being studied. This usually means people who are conducting trials, research, experim ents and other forms of study where somebody is watching their behavior closely.
These experiments occurred in the 1920 and in the 1950s they were analyzed by researcher Henry A. Landsberger where he came up with the term. Since then, Hawthorne effect has been used widely in psychology, although more recent criticisms aren’t always in agreeance with its probability.
The theory suggests that individuals who take part in an experiment might be more prone to changing their behavior because somebody is watching them closely, rather than any of the other variables that have been put in place for the experiment. Whether or not this is correct, it’s an effect that has had a lot of mention in psychology, and one that offers up a lot of suggestion about human behavior.
Original Hawthorne Experiments
Many people believe that the Hawthorne effect is named after the researcher who set up the experiments, but it actually refers to the place where these experiments took place. In the 1920s and 1930’s, researcher Henry A. Landsberger conducted experiments at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works electric company in Hawthrone, Illinois.
The company was interested in finding out whether or not the work environment had any impact on productivity, and so they set about looking at the different aspects of the work environment at the electric company. The research looked at all areas of the workplace and its environment including lighting, length of the workday, and how long their daily breaks were.
One of the most noted experiments was to do with the amount of light that workers had and whether or not it affected their productivity. While the experiments occurred, the lighting was increased and in turn, the worker’s productivity increased, but once the experiments were over the productivity dropped again.
The Results of the Experiments
The findings in these tests were that almost any minor or major change to their surroundings had a positive effect on productivity. Changes like a longer workday or fewer breaks also increased productivity, where normally these were things that would make workers decrease their productivity.
Due to the improved productivity, the researchers concluded that workers must be responding to the supervisors giving them more attention. Landsberger then coined the Hawthorne effect as a short-term improvement in workers by having supervisors watch them.
From there, other researchers looked into the findings but found later that this didn’t match what was happening. It was then decided that the Hawthorne effect was actually more accurately describing how productivity increased when participants were taking part in a study or experiment.
Modern Research and Hawthorne Effect
Although it was agreed upon that the Hawthorne effect had been proven in this and other experiments, modern research would have to disagree. In 2009, a team at the University of Chicago once again looked at the data from the original Hawthorne experiments and found that there were other factors at play when it came to an increase in productivity.
These researchers found that there were some subtle displays of the Hawthorne effect but that it wasn’t as obvious as originally claimed. Other studies have also failed to find real evidence of the effect but did find that getting attention from experiments led to more performance feedback which also led to an improvement in productivity.
Psychology and the Hawthorne Effect
Although there has been the modern criticism of the Hawthorne effect, that doesn’t mean it still hasn’t been used for discussions regarding psychology. The term is still useful when noting that people sometimes ‘fake good’ when in social situations or that their typical performance might differ from the maximal performance they show others.
The work of Landsberger became the foundation for a huge field in social science and therefore hasn’t lost all validity. Industrial Psychology makes the point that interpersonal factors and the relationships between people, coworkers, and researchers should always be taken into consideration when performing these studies.
Findings in Industrial Psychology show that if a certain group is chosen within their workplace for the purpose of research, they have a tendency to alter results as they feel special. Other findings believe that the Hawthorne Effect is nothing more than the placebo effect but just with another name. The rest have found that it’s simply the demand effect where those within an experiment will try to make their efforts match the expected results of an experiment.
How to Combat the Hawthorne Effect
Even if the Hawthorne effect has been criticized, it’s still something that researchers have to be mindful of when conducting research. Therefore, measures need to be taken to ensure that this effect occurs during a study. Thankfully, there are a couple of ways they can work to prevent it:
- Ensure participants in a study that their results will be completely anonymous so that they’re less likely to alter behavior just for more favorable results that will be known to others.
- An attempt to eliminate demand characteristics or other sources of bias so that the experiments are done in more natural settings. Although this is hard to do completely as a research experiment takes away the normality from the situation, it’s still advisable to attempt.
Avoiding the Hawthorne Effect in the Workplace
Those involved in business management and industrial psychology will always be interested in testing environments for the purpose of improving productivity. For those workplaces that are planning a study but concerned about the possibility of the Hawthorne effect taking place, there are a few things you can to do combat it.
Be Discreet
Anyone who has to change their work environment and start being studied in a lab is obviously going to adjust how they operate. Try to be discreet when studying your workers and not do anything obvious that is going to affect their productivity otherwise this could result in a change.
Look at the long-term
The original Hawthorne experiments weren’t performed for long enough to be able to get a real idea about productivity. Make sure your experiments are conducted over the long term so that you get a more accurate reading of how everyone performs. It’s unlikely people will have the stamina to over-perform for longer experiments and you’ll get a more truthful reading of their behavior.
Communicate the Why
If people think that they’re being watched because the company is looking to lay people off, they’ll work extra hard to make themselves indispensable. If you’re simply looking to improve conditions in the workplace they’re more likely to show you honestly how they’re working.
A Theory That Still Stands
With all of the criticism it has received over the years, there’s no doubt that being watched in an experiment or by supervisors can have some effect on our behavior. Even if these experiments were unable to find definitive proof of anything, they have given those involved in psychology and business management a huge insight into behavior.
Resources
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-hawthorne-effect-2795234
