Hawthorne Effect

Hawthorne Effect

Have you ever had the feeling you were being watched? What did that awareness feel like? When you have that feeling, what do you do — do you change your behavior? Do you modify your routine?

I am the boss and I am watching. You are the one being watched, what are you doing? You start working harder, being busy. Maybe not necessarily effective, but more active than you once were before you recognized that I was watching.

The Hawthorne Effect is real. Having been in and around the manufacturing world since the mid-1990’s we have all seen and been affected by the Hawthorne Effect. Yet the Hawthorne Effect is not just industrial or business; it is social pressure. Having also been into pacing sports for most of my life like running, swimming and biking, the pressure to keep up with the person you are next to or linked to in social networks is not a random phenomena, but an opportunity to better one another. Whether it reflects the competitive spirit, or the pressure of not wanting to seem as though you are not trying your best, you work harder.

Yet in this example peer pressure is disguised as tenets in the industrial and organizational psychology fields of studies that link to the understanding of human behaviors within businesses and organizations.

The Hawthorne Effect was the name of the various studies that took place in the Western Electric Hawthorne factory in the early 1900’s. The initial studies were to understand the effects of lighting and how it related to productivity improvements; brighter light versus lower light and how it increased motivation and productivity among workers. Although the term “Hawthorne Effect” was not linked to the behavior until 1958, when Henry Landsberger was reviewing the original productivity experiments of the 1920’s, it was realized that it was due to the observer effect now conceived as the Hawthorne Effect.

What are you doing? I see you!