The Hawthorne defect: Persistence of a flawed theory
“Like other hallowed but unproven concepts in psychology, the so -called Hawthorne effect has a life of its own.” By Berkeley Rice http://www.cs.unc.edu/~stotts/204/nohawth.html Most students of social psych are familiar with, or had better be if they want to pass. For decades, countless textbooks, Ph.D. theses, journal articles, and learned panels have cited it as a possible explanation for everything from why juvenile criminals in experimental program decide to go straight to why insomniacs sleep better in the laboratory. Whenever psychologists gather, one I apt to hear mention of the Hawthorne effect-even though, as it happens, the effect was never actually demonstrated by the original study. Proponents of the Hawthorne effect say that people who are singled out for a study of any kind may improve their performance or behavior not because of any specific condition being tested, but simply because of all the attention they receive. Those who mention the effect usually want to cast doubt on whether a given social innovation, instructional method, or therapy is really responsible for the change in behavior. Though the Hawthorne effect has been generalized to every kind of psychological study, it grew out of a pioneering series of experiments that tested the impact of improved working conditions on productivity. In typical accounts of the findings, current textbooks report: “To the surprise of the researchers, every innovation had the effect of increasing productivity.” (Lawrence Wrightsman, Social Psychology, 3rd ed., Brooks/Cole.) “Almost no matter what experimental conditions were imposed, increases in output occurred….The investigators had obviously influenced the subjects’ behavior merely by studying that behavior, and this phenomenon has become known as the Hawthorne effect.” (Kelly Shaver, Principles of