Hawthorne effect

The Hawthorne effect (commonly referred to as the observer effect) is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve or modify an aspect of their behavior, which is being experimentally measured, in response to the fact that they know that they are being studied,[1][2]not in response to any particular experimental manipulation.

History
The term was coined in 1950 by Henry A. Landsberger[3] when analysing older experiments from 19241932 at the Hawthorne Works (a Western Electric factory outside Chicago). Hawthorne Works had commissioned a study to see if its workers would become more productive in higher or lower levels of light. The workers' productivity seemed to improve when changes were made and slumped when the study was concluded. It was suggested that the productivity gain occurred due to the impact of the motivational effect on the workers as a result of the interest being shown in them. This effect was observed for minute increases in illumination. In these lighting studies, light intensity was altered to examine its effect on worker productivity. Most industrial/occupational psychology and organizational behavior textbooks refer to the illumination studies[citation needed]. Only occasionally are the rest of the studies mentioned.[4] Although illumination research of workplace lighting formed the basis of the Hawthorne effect, other changes such as maintaining clean work stations, clearing floors of obstacles, and even relocating workstations resulted in increased productivity for short periods. Thus the term is used to identify any type of short-lived increase in productivity.[3][5][6] Evaluation of the Hawthorne effect continues in the present day.[7][8][9]

Relay assembly experiments

In one of the studies, experimenters chose two women as test subjects and asked them to choose four other workers to join the test group. Together the women worked in a separate room over the course of five years (19271932) assembling telephone relays. Output was measured mechanically by counting how many finished relays each worker dropped down a chute. This measuring began in secret two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they had a supervisor who discussed changes with them and at times used their suggestions. Then the researchers spent five years measuring how different variables impacted the group's and individuals' productivity. Some of the variables were:

giving two 5-minute breaks (after a discussion with them on the best length of time), and then changing to two 10-minute breaks (not their preference). Productivity increased, but when they received six 5-minute rests, they disliked it and reduced output.

providing food during the breaks shortening the day by 30 minutes (output went up); shortening it more (output per hour went up, but overall output decreased); returning to the first condition (where output peaked).

Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. However it is said that this is the natural process of the human being to adapt to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment occurring. Researchers concluded that the workers worked harder because they thought that they were being monitored individually. Researchers hypothesized that choosing one's own coworkers, working as a group, being treated as special (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the productivity increase. One interpretation, mainly due to Elton Mayo,[10] was that "the six individuals became a team and the team gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to cooperation in the experiment." (There was a second relay assembly test room study whose results were not as significant as the first experiment.)

Bank wiring room experiments[edit source | editbeta]

The purpose of the next study was to find out how payment incentives would affect productivity. The surprising result was that productivity actually decreased. Workers apparently had become suspicious that their productivity may have been boosted to justify firing some of the workers later on.[11] The study was conducted by Elton Mayo and W. Lloyd Warner between 1931 and 1932 on a group of fourteen men who put together telephone switching equipment. The researchers found that although the workers were paid according to individual productivity, productivity decreased because the men were afraid that the company would lower the base rate. Detailed observation between the men revealed the existence of informal groups or "cliques" within the formal groups. These cliques developed informal rules of behavior as well as mechanisms to enforce them. The cliques served to controlable group members and to manage bosses; when bosses asked questions, clique members gave the same responses, even if they were untrue. These results show that workers were more responsive to the social force of their peer groups than to the control and incentives of management.

Interpretation and criticism[edit source | editbeta]

H. McIlvaine Parsons argues that in the studies where subjects received feedback on their work rates, the results should be considered biased by the feedback compared to the manipulation studies. He also argues that the rest periods involved possible learning effects, and the fear that the workers had about the intent of the studies may have biased the results.

Parsons defines the Hawthorne effect as "the confounding that occurs if experimenters fail to realize how the consequences of subjects' performance affect what subjects do" [i.e. learning effects, both permanent skill improvement and feedback-enabled adjustments to suit current goals]. His key argument is that in the studies where workers dropped their finished goods down chutes, the "girls" had access to the counters of their work rate.[12] It is possible that the illumination experiments were explained by a longitudinal learning effect. It is notable however that Parsons refuses to analyse the illumination experiments, on the grounds that they have not been properly published and so he cannot get at details, whereas he had extensive personal communication with Roethlisberger and Dickson. But Mayo says it is to do with the fact that the workers felt better in the situation, because of the sympathy and interest of the observers. He does say that this experiment is about testing overall effect, not testing factors separately. He also discusses it not really as an experimenter effect but as a management effect: how management can make workers perform differently because they feel differently. A lot to do with feeling free, not feeling supervised but more in control as a group. The experimental manipulations were important in convincing the workers to feel this way: that conditions were really different. The experiment was repeated with similar effects on mica-splitting workers.[citation needed] Richard E. Clark and Brenda M. Sugrue (1991, p. 333) in a review of educational research say that uncontrolled novelty effects cause on average 30% of a standard deviation (SD) rise (i.e. 50%-63% score rise), which decays to small level after 8 weeks. In more detail: 50% of a SD for up to 4 weeks; 30% of SD for 5 8 weeks; and 20% of SD for > 8 weeks, (which is < 1% of the variance). Richard Nisbett of the University of Michigan has described the Hawthorne effect as 'a glorified anecdote,' saying that 'once you have got the anecdote, you can throw away the data.'"[13] Harry Braverman points out in Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century that the Hawthorne tests were based on industrial psychology and were investigating whether workers' performance could be predicted by pre-hire testing. The Hawthorne study showed "that the performance of workers had little relation to ability and in fact often bore an inverse relation to test scores...". Braverman argues that the studies really showed that the workplace was not "a system of bureaucratic formal organisation on the Weberian model, nor a system of informal group relations, as in the interpretation of Mayo and his followers but rather a system of power, of class antagonisms". This discovery was a blow to those hoping to apply the behavioral sciences to manipulate workers in the interest of management.[14] The Hawthorne effect has been well established in the empirical literature beyond the original studies. The output ("dependent") variables were human work, and the educational effects can be expected to be similar (but it is not so obvious that medical effects would be). The experiments stand as a warning about simple experiments on human participants viewed as if they were only material systems. There is less certainty about

the nature of the surprise factor, other than it certainly depended on the mental states of the participants: their knowledge, beliefs, etc. Research on the demand effect also suggests that people might take on pleasing the experimenter as a goal, at least if it does not conflict with any other motive,[15] but also, improving their performance by improving their skill will be dependent on getting feedback on their performance, and an experiment may give them this for the first time. So you often will not see any Hawthorne effectonly when it turns out that with the attention came either usable feedback or a change in motivation. Adair (1984) warns of gross factual inaccuracy in most secondary publications on Hawthorne effect and that many studies failed to find it. He argues that it should be viewed as a variant of Orne's (1973) experimental demand effect. So for Adair, the issue is that an experimental effect depends on the participants' interpretation of the situation; this is whymanipulation checks are important in social sciences experiments. So he thinks it is not awareness per se, nor special attention per se, but participants' interpretation that must be investigated in order to discover if/how the experimental conditions interact with the participants' goals. This can affect whether participants believe something, if they act on it or do not see it as in their interest, etc. Rosenthal and Jacobson (1992) ch.11 also reviews and discusses the Hawthorne effect.[16] In a 2011 paper, economists Steven Levitt and John A. List claim that in the illumination experiments the variance in productivity is partly accounted for by other factors such as the weekly cycle of work or the seasonal temperature, and so the original conclusions were overstated.[17] If so, this confirms the analysis of SRG Jones's 1992 article examining the relay experiments.[18][19]

Mayo's Hawthorne Experiments George Elton Mayo was in charge of certain experiments on human behavior carried out at the Hawthorne Works of the General Electric Company in Chicago between 1924 and 1927. His research findings have contributed to organization development in terms of human relations and motivation theory.

Flowing from the findings of these investigations he came to certain conclusions as follows:

Work is a group activity. The social world of the adult is primarily patterned about work activity. The need for recognition, security and sense of belonging is more important in determining workers' morale and productivity than the physical conditions under which he works. A complaint is not necessarily an objective recital of facts; it is commonly a symptom manifesting disturbance of an individual's status position.

The worker is a person whose attitudes and effectiveness are conditioned by social demands from both inside and outside the work plant. Informal groups within the work plant exercise strong social controls over the work habits and attitudes of the individual worker. The change from an established society in the home to an adaptive society in the work plant resulting from the use of new techniques tends continually to disrupt the social organization of a work plant and industry generally. Group collaboration does not occur by accident; it must be planned and developed. If group collaboration is achieved the human relations within a work plant may reach a cohesion which resists the disrupting effects of adaptive society.

The details Variables Affecting Productivity

Specifically, Mayo wanted to find out what effect fatigue and monotony had on job productivity and how to control them through such variables as rest breaks, work hours, temperature and humidity. In the process, he stumbled upon a principle of human motivation that would help to revolutionize the theory and practice of management. Mayo took six women from the assembly line, segregated them from the rest of the factory and put them under the eye of a supervisor who was more a friendly observer than disciplinarian. Mayo made frequent changes in their working conditions, always discussing and explaining the changes in advance. He changed the hours in the working week, the hours in the workday the number of rest breaks. the time of the lunch hour. Occasionally, he would return the women to their original, harder working conditions.

Relay Assembly
The investigators selected two girls for their second series of experiments and asked them to choose another four girls, thus making a small group of six. The group was employed in assembling telephone relays - a relay being a small but intricate mechanism composed of about forty separate parts which had to be assembled by the girls seated at a lone bench and dropped into a chute when completed. The relays were mechanically counted as they slipped down the chute. It was intended that the basic rate of production should be noted at the start, and that subsequently changes would be introduced, the effectiveness of which would be measured by increased or decreased production of the relays.

Feedback mechanism
Through out the series of experiments, an observer sat with the girls in the workshop noting all that went on, keeping the girls informed about the experiment, asking for advice or information, and listening to their complaints. The experiment began by introducing various changes, each of which was continued for a test period of four to twelve weeks. The results of these changes are as follows:

Conditions and results

Under normal conditions with a forty eight hour week, including Saturdays, and no rest pauses. The girls produced 2,400 relays a week each.

They were then put on piece-work for eight weeks. Output went up Two five minute rest pauses, morning and afternoon, were introduced for a period of five weeks. Output went up once more The rest pauses were lengthened to ten minutes each. Output went up sharply. Six five minute pauses were introduced, and the girls complained that their work rhythm was broken by the frequent pauses. Output fell slightly Return to the two rest pauses, the first with a hot meal supplied by the Company free of charge. Output went up The girls were dismissed at 4.30 p.m. instead of 5.00 p.m. Output went up They were dismissed at 4.00 p.m. Output remained the same Finally, all the improvements were taken away, and the girls went back to the physical conditions of the beginning of the experiment: work on Saturday, 48 hour week, no rest pauses, no piece work and no free meal. This state of affairs lasted for a period of 12 weeks. Output was the highest ever recorded averaging 3000 relays a week.

What happened during the experiments

What happened was that six individuals became a team and the team gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to co-operation in the experiment. The consequence was that they felt themselves to be participating freely and without afterthought and were happy in the knowledge that they were working without coercion from above or limitation from below. They were themselves satisfied at the consequence for they felt that they were working under less pressure than ever before. In fact regular medical checks showed no signs of cumulative fatigue and absence from work declined by 80 per cent. It was noted too, that each girl had her own technique of putting the component parts of the relay together sometimes she varied this technique in order to avoid monotony and it was found that the more intelligent the girl, the greater was the number of variations (similar to McClelland's research findings into achievement motivated people.) The experimental group had considerable freedom of movement. They were not pushed around or bossed by anyone. Under these conditions they developed an increased sense of responsibility and instead of discipline from higher authority being imposed, it came from within the group itself.

The findings

To his amazement, Elton Mayo discovered a general upward trend in production, completely independent of any of the changes he made.

His findings didn't mesh with the then current theory (see F.W. Taylor) of the worker as motivated solely by self-interest. It didn't make sense that productivity would continue to rise gradually when he cut out breaks and returned the women to longer working hours.

Mayo began to look around and realized that the women, exercising a freedom they didn't have on the factory floor, had formed a social atmosphere that also included the observer who tracked their productivity. The talked, they joked. they began to meet socially outside of work.

Mayo had discovered a fundamental concept that seems obvious today. Workplaces are social environments and within them, people are motivated by much more than economic self-interest He concluded that all aspects of that industrial environment carried social value.

When the women were singled out from the rest of the factory workers, it raised their selfesteem. When they were allowed to have a friendly relationship with their supervisor. they felt happier at work. When he discussed changes in advance with them, they felt like part of the team.

He had secured their cooperation and loyalty; it explained why productivity rose even when he took away their rest breaks.

The power of the social setting and peer group dynamics became even more obvious to Mayo in a later part of the Hawthorne Studies, when he saw the flip side of his original experiments. A group of 14 men who participated in a similar study restricted production because they were distrustful of the goals of the project.

The portion of the Hawthorne Studies that dwelt on the positive effects of benign supervision and concern for workers that made them feel like part of a team became known as the Hawthorne Effect; the studies themselves spawned the human relations school of

management that is constantly being recycled in new forms today, witness quality circles, participatory management, team building, et al. Incidentally, the Hawthorne Works the place where history was made, is history now itself. Western Electric closed it in 1983.

The Hawthorne effect today In the training world, the Hawthorne Effect is a chameleon. Ask several trainers and you'll probably get several definitions, most of them legitimate and all of them true to some aspect of the original experiments by Elton Mayo, in Chicago that produced the term.

It has been described as the rewards you reap when you pay attention to people. The mere act of showing people that you're concerned about them usually spurs them to better job performance. That's the Hawthorne Effect. The Hawthorne Effect at Work Suppose you've taken a management trainee and given her specialized training in management skills she doesn't now possess. Without saving a word, you've given the trainee the feeling that she is so valuable to the organization that you'll spend time and money to develop her skills. She feels she's on a track to the top, and that motivates her to work harder and better. The motivation is independent of any particular skills or knowledge she may have gained from the training session. That's the Hawthorne Effect at work.

In a way, the Hawthorne Effect can be construed as an enemy of the modern trainer. Carrying the theory to the edges of cynicism, some would say it doesn't make any difference what you teach because the Hawthorne Effect will produce the positive outcome you want. A Sense of Belonging? How do you respond to executives who denigrate training and credit the Hawthorne Effect when productivity rises? So what? Effective training performs a dual function: It educates people and it strokes them. And there's nothing wrong with using the Hawthorne Effect to reach this other training goal. In fact, the contention is that about 50% of any successful training session can be attributed to the Hawthorne Effect.

The Hawthorne Effect has also been called the 'Somebody Upstairs Cares' syndrome. It's not as simplistic as the ideal popular under the human relations craze over recent years that you just have to be nice to workers. It's more than etiquette.

When people spend a large portion of their time at work, they must have a sense of belonging, of being part of a team. When they do, they produce better. That's the Hawthorne Effect. Orwellian? One often hears a different interpretation of the Hawthorne Effect. George Orwell would understand this version; it has a Big Brother ring that?s far less benign than other definitions. People use it when they talk about workers under the eye of the supervisor.

If someone should subtly observe workers on the job to see if they truly apply new procedures they've learned in a training course. Occasionally, managers object saying that observation isn't a valid test Of course they'll do a good job if you're watching them, they tell her. Isn't that the Hawthorne Effect? Well not exactly.

Part I - Illumination Experiments (1924-27) These experiments were performed to find out the effect of different levels of illumination (lighting) on productivity of labour. The brightness of the light was increased and decreased to find out the effect on the productivity of the test group. Surprisingly, the productivity increased even when the level of illumination was decreased. It was concluded that factors other than light were also important.