The Hawthorne Effect is cited by both business experts and psychology experts, but rarely in the same way. Some say it’s real, some that it’s real but misinterpreted, and then others that it doesn’t exist and never has. It all started with an attempt to increase productivity at a factory in the 1920s, and we’ve been arguing about it ever since. What does it mean? You tell us.
The story of the Hawthorne Effect begins in the 1920s, when productivity studies began at the Hawthorne Works electrical equipment factory in Illinois. They continued for the better part of a decade, with investigators tweaking nearly every aspect of working life. They changed the break schedule, the length of the working day, even the climate conditions. The most famous segments of the Hawthorne Works project were the so-called Illumination Studies, where investigators brightened the lights in the factory. Productivity increased. They brightened them some more. Productivity increased. They brightened them yet again. Productivity increased. They dimmed the lights until the factory was darker than it had ever been before. Productivity increased.
There were few things that researchers did that could decrease productivity. Surprisingly, they found that one of the few things that did was a series of small pay raises, but soon found that the workers had gotten together and planned to decrease their productivity because they thought the combination of heightened productivity and a little extra cash for people meant that the higher-ups were going to fire some extraneous workers. Shortening the working day by too long decreased overall productivity as well, although hourly productivity increased with shorter hours. Mostly, according to the original interpreters of the experiments, it seems that any meddling caused productivity to go up.
For many scientists this was an example of the bias that comes from people’s understanding that they are part of an experiment. No matter how much researchers might try to make experiments controlled, they can rarely control for the fact that the people involved know they are being experimented on. Business managers and practical psychologists took a different view - or rather a few different views. Some believed that the constant signs that they were being watched kept workers productive. Some thought that it was the knowledge that they were part of an experiment made workers feel that their job was important, and so they worked harder. Others thought that the change itself kept the day fresh. Elton Mayo, who was one of the people who coined the term, “The Hawthorne Effect,” believed that the sympathy and communication that the researchers gave to the workers might have made them more productive.