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Hawthrone Experiments: Concept, Implications, and Limitations

What is hawthorne experiments.

The Hawthorne effect is named after the Hawthorne Experiments that were carried out between 1924 and 1932 in the Hawthorne Works in Cicero of the Western Electric Company. Originally developed to study how environmental factors, including light, influenced workers’ outputs, the experiments gradually shifted toward analyzing the more general and psychological factors that might influence workers. The research found out that when the workers felt that somebody was monitoring them and noticed them, known as the Hawthorne effect, their productivity increased. Based on these findings, theorists began stressing social aspects of working environments, employee motivation, and team factors that ultimately moved organizations from the mechanism model of managing to the human relations model. Though several questions have been raised in terms of methods used, the Hawthorne Experiments played an important role in organizational behaviors and management.

Key Takeaways The Hawthorne effect is named after the Hawthorne Experiments that were carried out between 1924 and 1932. The occupational culture, worker interactions, and cooperation, all have an impact on the performance of the workers. From the research, there is a correlation between employee satisfaction and the amount of work given to them as well as the quality of their work. To a large extent, these experiments led to what was referred to as the human relations movement in management. Bradshaw and Roberts explained that human behavior in the workplace is a function of the social environment, as well as the psychological requirement of the worker and the practices employed by the management.

Table of Content

The Hawthorne Experiments: Concept

Implications of the hawthorne experiments, evaluation of the hawthrone experiment, methodological limitations, subsequent critiques and refinements, faqs - hawthrone experiments.

The Hawthorne Experiments showed that worker productivity is not only affected by physical work environment, but also by social and psychological factors although financial incentives were considered critical by workers.

The studies revealed the following points:

1. Social Factors Matter: There is evidence that people feel motivated and more productive when they perceive someone is watching and appreciating their work. Peer pressures, interactions, or group processes have been considered significant determinants of performance.

2. Employee Attention: The attention that supervisors devoted to the work and the appreciation of being a part of a crucial investigation boosted morale and created more output, which came to be known as the Hawthorne Effect.

3. Complex Human Behavior: Organization members’ behavior is not only rational and self-interested but is socially embedded, reflecting the nature of the social relations and psychology of the individual persons with whom they work.

1. Human Relations Movement: These experiments were also very crucial to the movement known as the human relations movement which deems social relationships as essential. In this, management techniques shifted towards concern with the well-being of employees, the exchanging of information, and employee involvement in decisions.

2. Employee Motivation: It also stemmed from the understanding that people are not motivated by money alone, hence creating new motivational theories and approaches. Employees were given factors such as job satisfaction, receive recognition, and get a chance to interact with other people.

3. Workplace Environment: The belief that the social environment is recurring also results in the improvement of the design and management of workplaces. Policies that enhance group activities like team building, group conversations, and work culture improvements gained center stage.

4. Organizational Psychology: The experiments provided the basis for a new area of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, an exploration of scientific means of controlling human performance in workplaces. It encouraged more exploration into the impact that various psychological and social factors evident in the workplace have on productivity and satisfaction.

5. Management Training: It became common to include special seminars and courses on interpersonal skills, leadership, and the significance of developing appropriate relations between people at work for the training programs of managers. They were advised to be more considerate when subordinating the employees and made to change their attitude to become more friendly.

6. Critiques and Refinements: These studies have been criticized too severely on methodological grounds; at least the experiments at any rate led to a finer appreciation of organizational processes. Subsequent investigations remain to develop additional and more precise results derived from Hawthorne Studies which insists on positivist validation in organizational research.

Several issues surround the Hawthorne Experiments; factors include the analysis of what exactly they brought to the theory of management and the drawbacks in the method employed in the experiments. Here’s a balanced view:

Contributions

1. Introduction of the Human Relations Approach: These experiments have thrown down the challenge from an objective approach to work and shifted the attention to subjective and more importantly social and psychological factors in the work environment. It endorsed the need for job satisfaction, communication, and group cooperation in influencing the levels of production.

2. Hawthorne Effect: It explains the concept of defining behavior shifts that occur when people perform a witnessed action; the fact that attention and feedback affect performance.

3. Foundation for Organizational Psychology: It laid down the foundation for the growth of industrial /organizational psychology which in turn led to additional studies on the motivation of employees, the level of satisfaction they have in their workplace, and the social relations within the working environment.

4. Enhanced Management Practices: It influenced more participative management practices and the espousal of concepts such as morale booster organizations that sought the involvement of employees in bettering their working conditions.

1. Lack of Rigorous Experimental Controls: Some scholars have complained about the lack of controls and proper experimental controls which leaves it very tricky to relate changes in productivity to the variables being worked on.

2. Observer Bias: One might argue that the bias could have arisen due to the presence of researchers and the changes made by them during the process. Seligman site points out that workers might have had better productivity because they were being watched and thus they considered themselves important even without actual changes in their working environment.

3. Overgeneralization: Several interpretations of the discovered findings have been deemed too generalized, as the authors rely on the assumption that the effects highlighted under investigation apply to people of all industries and workplaces.

4. Limited Scope: One potential limitation was that all the researched experiments were conducted in a particular organization type – the industrial type, in the specific organization – the Western Electric Company – which may cause some difficulty in generalizing the results to other types and cultural contexts.

1. Replication Issues: Later studies attempting to replicate the Hawthorne Experiments have yielded mixed results, raising questions about the consistency and generalizability of the original findings.

2. Alternative Explanations: Subsequent researchers have proposed alternative explanations for the observed productivity increases, such as improved working conditions, changes in management styles, and economic factors that were not adequately controlled in the original studies.

Overall Evaluation

Despite these methodological limitations, the Hawthorne Experiments are still highly regarded for their pioneering role in shifting the focus of management theory toward human and social factors. They highlighted the complexity of human behavior in organizational settings and the need for a more nuanced approach to managing people at work. The studies sparked a wave of research into workplace behavior, leading to more sophisticated theories and practices that consider both the social and psychological needs of employees. They also underscored the importance of designing work environments and management practices that foster employee well-being, collaboration, and engagement.

The Hawthorne Experiments played a revolutionary role in changing the tactics of management by researching the effect of social and psychological factors on workers’ performance. The Hawthorne Experiments were made with the workers of the Hawthorne’s factory, Western Electric Co., between 1924 and 1932 By these experiments it was found that the performance of the workers increased when they felt observed or appreciated by their management which is known as the Hawthorne effect. Thus, though not without their limitations the experiments precursed the human relations movement that gave paradigmatic importance to the satisfaction of the workers, proper communication, and the dynamics of the groups. The principles that emerged through the classical period continue to be relevant to contemporary management by addressing issues of social and psychological satisfaction, which are crucial for a positive work environment.

What were the Hawthorne Experiments?

The Hawthorne Experiments were a series of studies conducted at the Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, from 1924 to 1932. They aimed to investigate how different conditions affected worker productivity.

Who conducted the Hawthorne Experiments?

The experiments were conducted by the National Research Council and later by researchers from Harvard University, including Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger.

What was the main objective of the Hawthorne Experiments?

The main objective was to determine the effects of various physical and environmental conditions, such as lighting and break times, on worker productivity.

What is the Hawthorne Effect?

The Hawthorne Effect refers to the phenomenon where individuals change their behavior because they know they are being observed, which was first identified during these experiments.

What were the key phases of the Hawthorne Experiments?

The key phases were: Illumination Studies (1924-1927) Relay Assembly Test Room Studies (1927-1932) Mass Interviewing Program (1928-1930) Bank Wiring Observation Room Study (1931-1932)

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Home » Management Concepts » 4 Phases of Hawthorne Experiment – Explained

4 Phases of Hawthorne Experiment – Explained

At the beginning of the 20th century, companies were using scientific approaches to improve worker productivity. But that all began to change in 1924 with the start of the Hawthorne Studies, a 9-year research program at Western Electric Companies. The program, of which Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger played a major role, concluded that an organization’s undocumented social system was a powerful motivator of employee behavior. The Hawthorne Studies led to the development of the Human Relations Movement in business management . The experiment was about measuring the impact of different working conditions by the company itself (such as levels of lighting, payment systems, and hours of work) on the output of the employees. The researchers concluded that variations in output were not caused by changing physical conditions or material rewards only but partly by the experiments themselves. The special treatment required by experimental participation convinced workers that management had a particular interest in them. This raised morale and led to increased productivity. The term ‘Hawthorne effect’ is now widely used to refer to the behavior-modifying effects of being the subject of social investigation. The researchers concluded that the supervisory style greatly affected worker productivity. These results were, of course, a major blow to the position of scientific management, which held that employees were motivated by individual economic interest. The Hawthorne studies drew attention to the social needs as an additional source of motivation. Economic incentives were now viewed as one factor, but not the sole factor to which employees responded.

4 Phases of Hawthorne Experiment

The term “Hawthorne” is a term used within several behavioral management theories and is originally derived from the western electric company’s large factory complex named Hawthorne works. Starting in 1905 and operating until 1983, Hawthorne works had 45,000 employees and it produced a wide variety of consumer products, including telephone equipment, refrigerators and electric fans. As a result, Hawthorne works is well-known for its enormous output of telephone equipment and most importantly for its industrial experiments and studies carried out. Between 1924 and 1932, a series of experiments were carried out on the employees at the facility. The original purpose was to study the effect of lighting on workers’ productivity.

1. Illumination Studies

In the early 1920s Chicago’s Western Electric Hawthorne Works employed 12,000 workers. The plant was a primary manufacturer of telephones, and in 1924 the company provided a site to cooperate with the NRC on a series of test room studies to determine the relationship between illumination and worker efficiency. The basic idea was to vary and record levels of illumination in a test room with the expectation that as lighting was increased, productivity would too. In another test room, illumination was decreased, with the correlating expectation that efficiency would decrease. The electric power industry provided an additional impetus for these tests, hoping to encourage industries to use artificial lighting in place of natural light. The Illuminating Engineering Society’s Committee on Research also supported the tests and cooperated with the NRC. Workers were notified of the tests in order to attempt to control interference from human factors. When production increased in each test period, researchers looked to other factors such as increased supervision and a sense of competition that developed between the test and control groups. But the one conclusion the impressive team of industrial specialists and academics discovered was the lack of a consistent correlation between lighting levels and product output. No further tests were planned originally, but researchers were surprised at the unanticipated results.

The National Research Council researchers concluded that a variety of factors must affect industrial output other than just the lighting effect because they continued to produce 7 million relays annually.

2. Relay Assembly Test Room Experiment

In order to observe the impact of these other factors, a second set of tests was begun before the completion of the illumination studies on April 25, 1987. The relay-assembly tests were designed to evaluate the effect rest periods and hours of work would have on efficiency. Researchers hoped to answer a series of questions concerning why output declined in the afternoon: Did the operators tire out? Did they need brief rest periods? What was the impact of changes in equipment? What were the effects of a shorter work day? What role did worker attitudes play? Hawthorne engineers led by George Pennock were the primary researchers for the relay-assembly tests, originally intended to take place for only a few months. Six women operators volunteered for the study and two more joined the test group in January 1928. They were administered physical examinations before the studies began and then every six weeks in order to evaluate the effects of changes in working conditions on their health. The women were isolated in a separate room to assure accuracy in measuring output and quality, as temperature, humidity, and other factors were adjusted. The test subjects constituted a piece-work payment group and efforts were made to maintain steady work patterns. The Hawthorne researchers attempted to gain the women’s confidence and to build a sense of pride in their participation. A male observer was introduced into the test room to keep accurate records, maintain cordial working conditions, and provide some degree of supervision.

The women were employed in assembling relays or electromagnetic switches used in switching telephone calls automatically. The women assembled the more than 35 parts of the relay by hand. The relays were then carefully inspected. The entire process was highly labor intensive and the speed of assembly had an obvious effect on productivity.

Initially the women were monitored for productivity, and then they were isolated in a test room. Finally, the workers began to participate in a group payment rate, where extra pay for increased productivity was shared by the group. The other relay assemblers did not share in any bonus pay, but researchers concluded this added incentive was necessary for full cooperation. This single difference has been historically criticized as the one variable having the greatest significance on test results. These initial steps in the relay-assembly studies lasted only three months. In August, rest periods were introduced and other changes followed over the rest of the test period, including shortened work days and weeks. As the test periods turned from months into years, worker productivity continued to climb, once again providing unexpected results for the Hawthorne team to evaluate.

Productivity increased in excess of 30 percent over the first two and-a-half years of the studies and remained steady for the duration of the tests. The physicals indicated improved worker health and absenteeism decreased. By their own testimony, the women expressed increased satisfaction with all aspects of their jobs. Researchers tentatively concluded that performance and efficiency improved because of the rest periods, relief from monotonous working conditions, the wage incentive, and the type of supervision provided in the test environment. After additional study and consideration, the first two factors were rejected and further tests were conducted in an attempt to verify the effects of incentives and working conditions. The results were still not totally conclusive. Finally, researchers realized worker attitudes within the group were influential as was the more personal atmosphere of the test room. They concluded factors such as lighting, hours of work, rest periods, bonus incentives, and supervision affected workers, but the attitudes of the employees experiencing the factors were of greater significance. As a result, the Hawthorne team decided not to pursue similar studies. Almost as significant during the relay assembly tests was the introduction of a team of academics from the Harvard Business School into the experiments. Led by professors Elton Mayo and F. J. Roethlisberger, this new group of researchers would have an enormous impact on the Hawthorne studies and the future of human relations in the workplace.

However the same experiment was done on a group of 6 women placed in the same room whereas the production increased because they felt like a group where they were all connected through a team work. This is common sense, just like in a class room; as students meet day by day and study together the same materials, they will feel a sense of freedom that they do not experience in a playground floor.

Mayo’s contributions became increasingly significant in the experiments during the interviewing stages of the tests. Early results from the illumination tests and the relay-assembly tests led to surveys of worker attitudes, surveys not limited to test participants.

Work Conditions and Productivity 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 piecework for eight weeks. – Output increased
• They were given two five-minute breaks, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, for a period of five weeks. – Output increased, yet again
• The breaks were each lengthened to ten minutes. – Output rose sharply
• Six five-minute breaks were introduced. The girls complained that their work rhythm was broken by the frequent pauses – Output fell only slightly
• The original two breaks were reinstated, this time, with a complimentary hot meal provided during the morning break. – Output increased further still
• The workday was shortened to end at 4.30 p.m. instead of 5.00 p.m. – Output increased
• The workday was shortened to end at 4.00 p.m. – Output leveled off
• Finally, all the improvements were taken away, and the original conditions before the experiment were reinstated. They were monitored in this state for 12 more weeks. – Output was the highest ever recorded – averaging 3000 relays a week

3. Bank-Wiring Tests

The bank-wiring tests began in November 1931. The foreman of the bank-wiring department resisted the intrusion of observers into his work space and a bank-wiring test room was set up. The test room housed nine wirers, three solderers, and two inspectors. All were male between the ages of 20 and 25. Their job was to wire conductor banks, a repetitive and monotonous task. The banks were one of the major components of automatic telephone exchange. Between 3,000 and 6,000 terminals had to be wired for a set of banks. The work was tiring and required the workers to stand for long periods of time. Pay incentives and productivity measures were removed, but a researcher was placed into the test room as an observer and the workers were interviewed. The purpose of the bank-wiring tests was to observe and study social relationships and social structures within a group, issues raised by two other significant members of the research team, W. Lloyd Warner and William J. Dickson. Warner was on Mayo’s Harvard team, trained as an anthropologist and primarily interested in Hawthorne from an entirely different perspective, that of an observer of the social behavior of a group. Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the bank-wiring tests was that the workers combined to slow down production-a clear indication of the need for analysis of the social relationships of workers. Research showed the most admired worker among the group was the one who demonstrated the greatest resentment of authority by slowing down production the most.

The bank-wiring tests were shut down in the spring of 1932 in reaction to layoffs brought on by the deepening depression. Layoffs were gradual, but by May the bank-wiring tests were concluded. These tests were intended to study the group as a functioning unit and observe its behavior. The study findings confirmed the complexity of group relations and stressed the expectations of the group over an individual’s preference. The conclusion was to tie the importance of what workers felt about one another to worker motivation. Industrial plants were a complex social system with significant informal organizations that played a vital role in motivating workers. 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. There was no trust between employees and researches, so they simply held down production to the level they thought was in their best interest; the same thing happens when a classmates of yours steal the exam paper and the administration finds out. You would not say who did it because you wouldn’t want your classmate to be kicked out of school. So, your interest is to say that you do not know hoping that they don’t change the exam answers.

Employees had physical as well as social needs, and the company gradually developed a program of human relations including employee counseling and improved supervision with an emphasis on the individual workers. The results were a reinterpretation of industrial group behavior and the introduction of what has become human relations.

4. The Interview Process

Under Mayo and Roethlisberger’s direction, the Hawthorne experiments began to incorporate extensive interviewing. The researchers hoped to glean details (such as home life or relationship with a spouse or parent) that might play a role in employees’ attitudes towards work and interactions with supervisors. From 1928 to 1930 Mayo and Roethlisberger oversaw the process of conducting more than 21,000 interviews and worked closely training researchers in interviewing practices.

Mayo and Roethlisberger’s methodology shifted when they discovered that, rather than answering directed questions, employees expressed themselves more candidly if encouraged to speak openly in what was known as nondirected interviewing. “It became clear that if a channel for free expression were to be provided, the interview must be a listening rather than a questioning process,” a research study report noted. “The interview is now defined as a conversation in which the employee is encouraged to express himself freely upon any topic of his own choosing.”

Interviews, which averaged around 30 minutes, grew to 90 minutes or even two hours in length in a process meant to provide an emotional release. You always want to feel appreciated and taken into consideration from your boss or any other higher authority you are working with. This can create a trusting circle between both. Just like when you are supposed to learn from your teacher the materials she is giving you and at the same time you ask her for her advice on your personal life and start telling her what is going on with you in your daily life. You will feel a close relationship that connects you with the teacher and you will start to listen to her more and take into consideration what she is giving you as materials because there is a trust circle between both.

The resulting records, hundreds and hundreds of pages in which employees disclose personal details of their day to day lives, offer an astonishingly intimate portrait of the American industrial worker in the years leading to and following the Depression. In a pre-computer age, thousands of comments were sorted into employees’ attitudes about general working conditions, specific jobs, or supervisors and among these categories into favorable and unfavorable comments used to support interpretations of the data. Both workers’ and supervisors’ comments would aid in the development of personnel policies and supervisory training, including the subsequent implementation of a routine counseling program for employees.

Roethlisberger discovered that what employees found most deeply rewarding were close associations with one another, “informal relationships of interconnectedness,” as he called them. “Whenever and where it was possible,” he wrote, generated them like crazy. In many cases they found them so satisfying that they often did all sorts of non logical thingsâ ‚¬ ¦in order to belong. In Mayo’s broad view, the industrial revolution had shattered strong ties to the workplace and community experienced by workers in the skilled trades of the 19th century. The social cohesion holding democracy together, he wrote, was predicated on these collective relationships, and employees’ belief in a sense of common purpose and value of their work.

The Hawthorne Legacy

The Hawthorne studies were conducted in three independent stages-the illumination tests, the relay-assembly tests, and the bank-wiring tests, although each was a separate experiment. The second and third each developed out of the preceding series of tests. Neither Hawthorne officials nor NRC researchers anticipated the duration of the studies, yet the conclusions of each set of tests and the Hawthorne experiments as a whole are the legacy of the studies and what sets them apart as a significant part of the history of industrial behavior and human relations.

The tests challenged prior assumptions about worker behavior. Workers were not motivated solely by pay. The importance of individual worker attitudes on behavior had to be understood. Further, the role of the supervisor in determining productivity and morale was more clearly defined. Group work and behavior were essential to organizational objectives and tied directly to efficiency and, thus, to corporate success. The most disturbing conclusion emphasized how little the researchers could determine about informal group behavior and its role in industrial settings. Finally, the Hawthorne studies proved beyond certainty that there was a great deal more to be learned about human interactions in the workplace, and academic and industrial study has continued in an effort to understand these complex relationships.

Beyond the legacy of the Hawthorne studies has been the use of the term “Hawthorne effect” to describe how the presence of researchers produces a bias and unduly influences the outcome of the experiment. In addition, several important published works grew out of the Hawthorne experience, foremost of which was Mayo’s The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization and Roethlisberger and Dickson’s Management and the Worker.

The Hawthorne studies have been described as the most important social science experiment ever conducted in an industrial setting, yet the studies were not without their critics. Several criticisms, including those of sociologist Daniel Bell, focused on the exclusion of unionized workers in the studies. Sociologists and economists were the most commanding critics, defending their disciplinary turf more than offering serious criticisms. Despite these critical views, the flow of writings on the Hawthorne studies attests to their lasting influence and the fascination the tests have held for researchers. The studies had the impact of defining clearly the human relations school. Another contribution was an emphasis on the practice of personnel counseling. Industrial sociology owes its life as a discipline to the studies done at the Hawthorne site. This, in part, led to the enormous growth of academic programs in organizational behavior at American colleges and universities, especially at the graduate level.

Criticism of Hawthorne Studies

The influence of Hawthorne studies has declined in the last ten years as a result of widespread failure of later studies to reveal any reliable relation between the social satisfaction of industrial workers and their work performance but still, reputable textbooks still refers almost reverentially to the Hawthorne studies as a classic in the history of social science in industry. There have been a broad criticism and assumptions, many of them cogent. How is it that nearly all authors of textbooks who have drawn material from the Hawthorne studies have failed to recognize the vast discrepancy between evidence and conclusions of those studies, have frequently miss described the actual observations and occurrences in a way that brings the evidence into line with the conclusions reached by Hawthorne studies?

This part of the project will critically examine the evidence and arguments from which the investigators reached conclusions. The first hypothesis made states that the change in work task and physical context help in the 30 percent increase in the productivity of the workers. Considering the girls on the relay room the one who had several tasks to do has improved the less and then when they put her in the group with the other girls doing one task she improved but that was not a conclusive evidence in favour of the hypothesis so the investigator had to dismiss it. Second hypothesis states that the reduced fatigue due to rest pauses and shorter working hours played a role in the 30 percent increase but medical examination could not provide evidence of fatigue effect so this hypothesis was also dismissed. In stage II, the girls wage was based on the average output of the whole department and their productivity increased by 13 percent. But it promptly dropped by 16 percent when the experiment was discontinued. Here a hypothesis was made that the wage incentive was in effect but the investigators also were not impressed by this evidence and did not support it. A comparison is made between the first three stages. Stage III produced a claimed of 15 percent increase in rate of output over 14 months, thereafter the average rate of output declined due to depressions. The investigators attribute the decline and ignored the possibility that the increase also could have been influenced by changing general economic and employment conditions. Also, the peak output for each girl did not occur at the same dates. It turned out that there is no one period over which the group achieved the increased claimed. In stage I, two measures of the workers performance were used: Total output per week and hourly rate of output per week. In the report of this stage it is not clear in which output is the increase. This has lead to misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the Hawthorne studies results.

Here several points are of present importance. For stage I, it is not clear wither the 30 percent increase in the output claimed refers to rate of output or total output. For stage III, if total output per week is used to measure performance, the 15 percent increased claimed reduces to less than zero because although output per hour increased by 15 percent, the weekly hours decreased by 17 percent. From evidence to conclusion, the investigator concluded that 15 percent remains as the maximum amount to be attributed but they decided that it is impossible to consider a wage incentive as a thing in itself having an independent effect on individual. Here we should appreciate how invalid are the influences made. In stage I, friendly supervision and a change to a preferred incentive system led to an increase in total output about 30 percent. In stage III, friendly supervision without a change in payment system led to no increase In total output. The investigator concluded that the effect of a wage incentive system is no greatly influenced by social considerations that it is impossible to consider it capable of independent effect. None of the results of the three first stages gave the slightest substantiation to the theory that the workers are primarily motivated by economic interest. The evidence indicates that the efficiency of a wage incentive is so independent on its relation to other factors and cannot be taken as an independent effect. This conclusion is a contrast to the objectives results obtained.

The critical examination attempted here shows the error and the incompetence in the understanding and use of scientific method in the Hawthorne studies from beginning to end. There are major deficiencies in stages I, II and III. First there was no attempt to establish sample groups representative any larger population than the groups themselves, therefore no generalization is legitimate. Second, there was no attempt to employ control data from the output records of the girls who were not put under special experimental conditions. Third, even if both previous points had been met, the experiments would still have been of minor scientific value since a group of five subjects is too small to yield statistically reliable results. These points make it clear that the evidence obtained from stages I, II and III does not support any of the conclusions derived by Hawthorne investigators. The results of these studies are far from supporting the various components of the “human relation approach” and are surprisingly consistent with a rather old-world view about the value of monetary incentives, driving leadership and discipline. It is only by massive and relentless reinterpretation that the evidence is made to yield contrary conclusions. The limitations of the Hawthorne studies clearly render them incapable of yielding serious support of any sort of generalization whatever.

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Hawthorne Effect: Definition, How It Works, and How to Avoid It

Ayesh Perera

B.A, MTS, Harvard University

Ayesh Perera, a Harvard graduate, has worked as a researcher in psychology and neuroscience under Dr. Kevin Majeres at Harvard Medical School.

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Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

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Key Takeaways

• The Hawthorne effect refers to the increase in the performance of individuals who are noticed, watched, and paid attention to by researchers or supervisors.
• In 1958, Henry A. Landsberger coined the term ‘Hawthorne effect’ while evaluating a series of studies at a plant near Chicago, Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works.
• The novelty effect, demand characteristics and feedback on performance may explain what is widely perceived as the Hawthorne effect.
• Although the possible implications of the Hawthorne effect remain relevant in many contexts, recent research findings challenge many of the original conclusions concerning the phenomenon.

The Hawthorne effect refers to a tendency in some individuals to alter their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed (Fox et al., 2007).

This phenomenon implies that when people become aware that they are subjects in an experiment, the attention they receive from the experimenters may cause them to change their conduct.

Hawthorne Studies

The Hawthorne effect is named after a set of studies conducted at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Plant in Cicero during the 1920s. The Scientists included in this research team were Elton Mayo (Psychologist), Roethlisberger and Whilehead (Sociologists), and William Dickson (company representative).

There are 4 separate experiments in Hawthorne Studies:

Illumination Experiments (1924-1927) Relay Assembly Test Room Experiments (1927-1932) Experiments in Interviewing Workers (1928- 1930) Bank Wiring Room Experiments (1931-1932)

The Hawthorne Experiments, conducted at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant in the 1920s and 30s, fundamentally influenced management theories.

They highlighted the importance of psychological and social factors in workplace productivity, such as employee attention and group dynamics, leading to a more human-centric approach in management practices.

Illumination Experiment

The first and most influential of these studies is known as the “Illumination Experiment”, conducted between 1924 and 1927 (sponsored by the National Research Council).

The company had sought to ascertain whether there was a relationship between productivity and the work environments (e.g., the level of lighting in a factory).

During the first study, a group of workers who made electrical relays experienced several changes in lighting. Their performance was observed in response to the minutest alterations in illumination.

What the original researchers found was that any change in a variable, such as lighting levels, led to an improvement in productivity. This was true even when the change was negative, such as a return to poor lighting.

However, these gains in productivity disappeared when the attention faded (Roethlisberg & Dickson, 1939). The outcome implied that the increase in productivity was merely the result of a motivational effect on the company’s workers (Cox, 2000).

Their awareness of being observed had apparently led them to increase their output. It seemed that increased attention from supervisors could improve job performance.

Hawthorne Experiment by Elton Mayo

Relay assembly test room experiment.

Spurred by these initial findings, a series of experiments were conducted at the plant over the next eight years. From 1928 to 1932, Elton Mayo (1880–1949) and his colleagues began a series of studies examining changes in work structure (e.g., changes in rest periods, length of the working day, and other physical conditions.) in a group of five women.

The results of the Elton Mayo studies reinforced the initial findings of the illumination experiment. Freedman (1981, p. 49) summarizes the results of the next round of experiments as follows:

“Regardless of the conditions, whether there were more or fewer rest periods, longer or shorter workdays…the women worked harder and more efficiently.”

Analysis of the findings by Landsberger (1958) led to the term the Hawthorne effect , which describes the increase in the performance of individuals who are noticed, watched, and paid attention to by researchers or supervisors.

Bank Wiring Observation Room Study

In a separate study conducted between 1927 and 1932, six women working together to assemble telephone relays were observed (Harvard Business School, Historical Collections).

Following the secret measuring of their output for two weeks, the women were moved to a special experiment room. The experiment room, which they would occupy for the rest of the study, had a supervisor who discussed various changes to their work.

The subsequent alterations the women experienced included breaks varied in length and regularity, the provision (and the non-provision) of food, and changes to the length of the workday.

For the most part, changes to these variables (including returns to the original state) were accompanied by an increase in productivity.

The researchers concluded that the women’s awareness of being monitored, as well as the team spirit engendered by the close environment improved their productivity (Mayo, 1945).

Subsequently, a related study was conducted by W. Lloyd Warner and Elton Mayo, anthropologists from Harvard (Henslin, 2008).

They carried out their experiment on 14 men who assembled telephone switching equipment. The men were placed in a room along with a full-time observer who would record all that transpired. The workers were to be paid for their individual productivity.

However, the surprising outcome was a decrease in productivity. The researchers discovered that the men had become suspicious that an increase in productivity would lead the company to lower their base rate or find grounds to fire some of the workers.

Additional observation unveiled the existence of smaller cliques within the main group. Moreover, these cliques seemed to have their own rules for conduct and distinct means to enforce them.

The results of the study seemed to indicate that workers were likely to be influenced more by the social force of their peer groups than the incentives of their superiors.

This outcome was construed not necessarily as challenging the previous findings but as accounting for the potentially stronger social effect of peer groups.

Hawthorne Effect Examples

Managers in the workplace.

The studies discussed above reveal much about the dynamic relationship between productivity and observation.

On the one hand, letting employees know that they are being observed may engender a sense of accountability. Such accountability may, in turn, improve performance.

However, if employees perceive ulterior motives behind the observation, a different set of outcomes may ensue. If, for instance, employees reason that their increased productivity could harm their fellow workers or adversely impact their earnings eventually, they may not be actuated to improve their performance.

This suggests that while observation in the workplace may yield salutary gains, it must still account for other factors such as the camaraderie among the workers, the existent relationship between the management and the employees, and the compensation system.

A study that investigated the impact of awareness of experimentation on pupil performance (based on direct and indirect cues) revealed that the Hawthorne effect is either nonexistent in children between grades 3 and 9, was not evoked by the intended cues, or was not sufficiently strong to alter the results of the experiment (Bauernfeind & Olson, 1973).

However, if the Hawthorne effect were actually present in other educational contexts, such as in the observation of older students or teachers, it would have important implications.

For instance, if teachers were aware that they were being observed and evaluated via camera or an actual person sitting inside the class, it is not difficult to imagine how they might alter their approach.

Likewise, if older students were informed that their classroom participation would be observed, they might have more incentives to pay diligent attention to the lessons.

Alternative Explanations

Despite the possibility of the Hawthorne effect and its seeming impact on performance, alternative accounts cannot be discounted.

The Novelty Effect

The Novelty Effect denotes the tendency of human performance to show improvements in response to novel stimuli in the environment (Clark & Sugrue, 1988). Such improvements result not from any advances in learning or growth, but from a heightened interest in the new stimuli.

Demand Characteristics

Demand characteristics describe the phenomenon in which the subjects of an experiment would draw conclusions concerning the experiment’s objectives, and either subconsciously or consciously alter their behavior as a result (Orne, 2009). The intentions of the participant—which may range from striving to support the experimenter’s implicit agenda to attempting to utterly undermine the credibility of the study—would play a vital role herein.

Feedback on Performance

It is possible for regular evaluations by the experimenters to function as a scoreboard that enhances productivity. The mere fact that the workers are better acquainted with their performance may actuate them to increase their output.

Despite the seeming implications of the Hawthorne effect in a variety of contexts, recent reviews of the initial studies seem to challenge the original conclusions.

For instance, the data from the first experiment were long thought to have been destroyed. Rice (1982) notes that “the original [illumination] research data somehow disappeared.”

Gale (2004, p. 439) states that “these particular experiments were never written up, the original study reports were lost, and the only contemporary account of them derives from a few paragraphs in a trade journal.”

However, Steven Levitt and John List of the University of Chicago were able to uncover and evaluate these data (Levitt & List, 2011). They found that the supposedly notable patterns were entirely fictional despite the possible manifestations of the Hawthorne effect.

They proposed excess responsiveness to variations induced by the experimenter, relative to variations occurring naturally, as an alternative means to test for the Hawthorne effect.

Another study sought to determine whether the Hawthorne effect actually exists, and if so, under what conditions it does, and how large it could be (McCambridge, Witton & Elbourne, 2014).

Following the systemic review of the available evidence on the Harthorne effect, the researchers concluded that while research participation may indeed impact the behaviors being investigated, discovering more about its operation, its magnitude, and its mechanisms require further investigation.

How to Reduce the Hawthorne Effect

The credibility of experiments is essential to advances in any scientific discipline. However, when the results are significantly influenced by the mere fact that the subjects were observed, testing hypotheses becomes exceedingly difficult.

As such, several strategies may be employed to reduce the Hawthorne Effect.

Discarding the Initial Observations :

• Participants in studies often take time to acclimate themselves to their new environments.
• During this period, the alterations in performance may stem more from a temporary discomfort with the new environment than from an actual variable.
• Greater familiarity with the environment over time, however, would decrease the effect of this transition and reveal the raw effects of the variables whose impact the experimenters are observing.

Using Control Groups:

• When the subjects experiencing the intervention and those in the control group are treated in the same manner in an experiment, the Hawthorne effect would likely influence both groups equivalently.
• Under such circumstances, the impact of the intervention can be more readily identified and analyzed.
• Where ethically permissible, the concealment of information and covert data collection can be used to mitigate the Hawthorne effect.
• Observing the subjects without informing them, or conducting experiments covertly, often yield more reliable outcomes. The famous marshmallow experiment at Stanford University, which was conducted initially on 3 to 5-year-old children, is a striking example.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the researchers, who identified the hawthorne effect, see as evidence that employee performance was influenced by something other than the physical work conditions.

The researchers of the Hawthorne Studies noticed that employee productivity increased not only in improved conditions (like better lighting), but also in unchanged or even worsened conditions.

They concluded that the mere fact of being observed and feeling valued (the so-called “Hawthorne Effect”) significantly impacted workers’ performance, independent from physical work conditions.

What is the Hawthorne effect in simple terms?

The Hawthorne Effect is when people change or improve their behavior because they know they’re being watched.

It’s named after a study at the Hawthorne Works factory, where researchers found that workers became more productive when they realized they were being observed, regardless of the actual working conditions.

Bauernfeind, R. H., & Olson, C. J. (1973). Is the Hawthorne effect in educational experiments a chimera ? The Phi Delta Kappan, 55 (4), 271-273.

Clark, R. E., & Sugrue, B. M. (1988). Research on instructional media 1978-88. In D. Ely (Ed.), Educational Media and Technology Yearbook, 1994. Volume 20. Libraries Unlimited, Inc., PO Box 6633, Englewood, CO 80155-6633.

Cox, E. (2001).  Psychology for A-level . Oxford University Press.

Fox, N. S., Brennan, J. S., & Chasen, S. T. (2008). Clinical estimation of fetal weight and the Hawthorne effect. European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, 141 (2), 111-114.

Gale, E.A.M. (2004). The Hawthorne studies – a fable for our times? Quarterly Journal of Medicine, (7) ,439-449.

Henslin, J. M., Possamai, A. M., Possamai-Inesedy, A. L., Marjoribanks, T., & Elder, K. (2015). Sociology: A down to earth approach . Pearson Higher Education AU.

Landsberger, H. A. (1958). Hawthorne Revisited : Management and the Worker, Its Critics, and Developments in Human Relations in Industry.

Levitt, S. D., & List, J. A. (2011). Was there really a Hawthorne effect at the Hawthorne plant? An analysis of the original illumination experiments. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3 (1), 224-38.

Mayo, E. (1945). The human problems of an industrial civilization . New York: The Macmillan Company.

McCambridge, J., Witton, J., & Elbourne, D. R. (2014). Systematic review of the Hawthorne effect: new concepts are needed to study research participation effects. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 67 (3), 267-277.

McCarney, R., Warner, J., Iliffe, S., Van Haselen, R., Griffin, M., & Fisher, P. (2007). The Hawthorne Effect: a randomised, controlled trial. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 7 (1), 1-8.

Rice, B. (1982). The Hawthorne defect: Persistence of a flawed theory. Psychology Today, 16 (2), 70-74.

Orne, M. T. (2009). Demand characteristics and the concept of quasi-controls. Artifacts in behavioral research: Robert Rosenthal and Ralph L. Rosnow’s classic books, 110 , 110-137.

Further Information

• Wickström, G., & Bendix, T. (2000). The” Hawthorne effect”—what did the original Hawthorne studies actually show?. Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health, 363-367.
• Levitt, S. D., & List, J. A. (2011). Was there really a Hawthorne effect at the Hawthorne plant? An analysis of the original illumination experiments. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(1), 224-38.
• Oswald, D., Sherratt, F., & Smith, S. (2014). Handling the Hawthorne effect: The challenges surrounding a participant observer. Review of social studies, 1(1), 53-73.
• Bloombaum, M. (1983). The Hawthorne experiments: a critique and reanalysis of the first statistical interpretation by Franke and Kaul. Sociological Perspectives, 26(1), 71-88.

Hawthorne Experiment

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• Sun Jianmin 2  

It refers to a series of experiments conducted at the Hawthorne factory under Western Electric in Chicago, The United States and is also known as the Hawthorne study. From 1924 to 1932, the American psychologist George Mayo led a group of researchers to carry out four experiments in two phases within 8 years. The experiments began as an ergonomic study and later evolved into an interpersonal study. (1) Lighting experiment: it aimed to investigate the relationship between lighting and work efficiency, but the experimental result did not meet expectations, that is, the output of the experimental group kept increasing regardless of whether the lighting conditions were improved or deteriorated. (2) Welfare experiment: it aimed to study the impact of welfare measures on production. The result did not meet expectations either, that is, improvements in welfare measures did not affect the productivity of employees. (3) Interview experiment: from the above two experiments, Mayo realized that...

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Hawthorne experiments on human behavior: findings and conclusion.

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Hawthorne Experiments on Human Behavior: Findings and Conclusion!

George Elton Mayo was in charge of certain experiments on human behaviour carried out at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric company in Chicago between 1924 and 1927. His research findings have contributed to organizational development in terms of human relations and motivation theory.

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

1. Work is a group activity.

2. The social world of the adult is primarily patterned about work activity.

3. 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.

4. A complaint is not necessarily an objective recital of facts; it is commonly a symptom manifesting disturbance of an individual’s status position.

5. The worker is a person whose attitudes and effectiveness are conditioned by social demands from both inside and outside the work area.

6. Informal groups within the work area exercise strong social controls over the work habits and attitudes of the individual worker.

7. The change from an established society in the home to an adaptive society in the work area resulting from the use of new techniques tends to continually disrupt the social organization of a work area plant and industry generally.

8. Group collaboration does not occur by accident; it must be planned and developed. If group collaboration is achieved, then the human relations within a work area may reach a cohesion which resists the disrupting effects of adaptive society.

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 blend with the then current theory 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 self-esteem. 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, etc.

Incidentally, the Hawthorne Works—the place where history was made, is history itself now. Western Electric closed it in 1983.

The Hawthorne Effect:

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 saying 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:

Some executives denigrate training and credit the Hawthorne Effect when productivity rises. 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. Those who think that Hawthorne effect means that you simply ‘have to be nice to people’, are under a misconception because it is more than etiquette’.

Actually, 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 feel that they belong, they produce better. That’s the Hawthorne Effect. There is a different interpretation of the Hawthorne Effect. It has a Big Brother ring that’s far less benign than other definitions. It is about workers under the eye of the supervisor.

It questions the reliability of the idea of observing workers on the job to see if they truly apply new procedures they’ve learned in a training course. Most managers object saying that observation isn’t a valid test as it is obvious that the workers will do a good job if you’re watching them.

In essence the Hawthorne Effect really is not just about “positive outcomes” the positive effect of “attention” wore off later in the life-span of the Hawthorne Studies. It is about the absence of definite correlation (positive or negative) between productivity and independent variables used in the experiments (monetary incentive, rest pauses, etc.).

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Elton Mayo's Hawthorne Experiments

Early exploration of workplace motivation.

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What causes workers to be more productive? Researchers have asked this question for years. In fact, pioneering work began in the 1920s as an attempt to discover ways to increase production efficiency – and then led both to the founding of the human relations school of management, and to the development of many of the motivational tools that are used today.

At the center of this work was Elton Mayo, a Harvard researcher. He looked at the results of early motivation experiments and concluded that psychological and social factors played a larger role in productivity than physical elements.

Experiments at Hawthorne

In 1927, researchers were trying to determine the optimal amount of lighting, temperature, and humidity for assembling electronic components at Western Electric's Hawthorne plant. The results showed that lighting had no consistent effect on production. Researchers were frustrated to discover that increasing light increased output, but reducing light also increased output. The common factor, it seemed, was that something in the work environment was changed, and that positive effects were then observed.

After thoroughly examining the results, Elton Mayo and his fellow researchers determined that workers weren't responding to the change in lighting conditions, but instead were reacting to the fact that they were being observed by the experimenters. This phenomenon became known as the Hawthorne effect. The workers' awareness that researchers were measuring their productivity was sufficient to increase productivity.

This idea is similar in philosophy to the Pygmalion effect , which states that high expectations lead to high outcomes.

The identification of the Hawthorne effect led to the recognition of the importance of psychological and social factors at work. Further experiments over the next five years revealed that human factors played a large role in workplace motivation and productivity. Researchers manipulated factors like break times, pay, and the type of supervision. Each time, they found increases in output.

Through the test results and interviews with the workers involved in the experiments, researchers discovered the effects on productivity of worker attitudes, the peer group, and other social forces, as well supervisory style. Interestingly, and contrary to popular belief, the researchers concluded that economic motivation was not the only source of productivity. In fact, in many cases pay wasn't even the most important factor in worker output.

The findings of the Hawthorne experiments broadened the study of the workplace beyond the influences of the Scientific Management movement, and its emphasis on the efficiency of workers' actions. Specifically, the findings laid the foundation for modern motivation theory by concluding the following:

• Workplace culture plays a significant role in productivity.
• Work conditions affect productivity, but pay is not the only stimulating factor.
• Management style and leadership affect productivity.
• Job satisfaction influences work output.
• Work is a social environment. Social and psychological factors like interaction, self-esteem, and cooperation are important for high productivity.

The Hawthorne experiments are largely credited with laying the foundation of our current understanding of the relationships between motivation, job satisfaction, change, and leadership.

While paying attention to people and cultural issues is a standard part of today's approach to leadership, this was innovative and new in the 1930s. The Hawthorne findings led researchers to study the importance of human factors in job performance, and these studies have heavily influenced best practices in areas such as training, choosing supervisory staff, and establishing favorable work conditions.

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HAWTHORNE EXPERIMENTS ELTON MAYO

Related Links: Herzberg | Scientific Management | Likert | Victor Vroom | John Adair |

Introduction

Elton Mayo’s team conducted a number of experiments involving six female workers. These experiments are often referred to as the Hawthorne experiments or Hawthorne studies as they took place at The Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago.

Hawthorne Experiment Details

Over the course of five years, Mayo’s team altered the female worker’s working conditions and monitored how the change in working conditions affected the workers morale and productivity. The changes in working conditions included changes in working hours, rest brakes, lighting, humidity, and temperature. The changes were explained to the workers prior to implementation.

Hawthorne Experiment Results

At the end of the five year period, the female worker’s working conditions, reverted back to the conditions before the experiment began. Unexpectedly the workers morale and productivity rose to levels higher than before and during the experiments. The combination of results during and after the experiment (ie the increase in the workers productivity when they were returned to their original working conditions) led Mayo to conclude that workers were motivated by psychological conditions more than physical working condition.

Hawthorne Experiment Conclusions

After analysing the results from the Hawthorne experiments Mayo concluded that workers were motivated by more than self interest and the following had an impact too:

Psychological Contract There is an unwritten understanding between the worker and employer regarding what is expected from them; Mayo called this the psychological contract.

Interest in Workers A worker’s motivation can be increased by showing an interest in them. Mayo classified studying the workers (through the experiments) as showing an interest in the workers.

Work is a Group Activity Work is a group activity, team work can increase a worker’s motivation as it allows people to form strong working relationships and increases trust between the workers. Work groups are created formally by the employer but also occur informally. Both informal and formal groups should be used to increase productivity as informal groups influence the worker’s habits and attitudes.

Social Aspect of Work Workers are motivated by the social aspect of work, as demonstrated by the female workers socialising during and outside work and the subsequent increase in motivation.

Recognise Workers Workers are motivated by recognition, security and a sense of belonging.

Communication The communication between workers and management influences workers’ morale and productivity. Workers are motivated through a good working relationship with management.

The traditional view of how to motivate employees is that you offer monetary rewards (pay increases, bonuses etc) for work completion. However the Hawthorne experiments may suggest that motivation is more complicated than that. Advocates of the "Hawthorne Effect" will state that the Hawthorne experiment results show that motivation can be improved through improving working relationships and social interraction.