The Hawthorne Effect – Fact or Fiction

What Is The Hawthorne Effect?

Search for the Hawthorne Effect in your favorite AI engine. You will get something like…

The “Hawthorne Effect” is when people change their behavior because they know they are being watched or studied, often leading to improved effort or productivity.

I’ve heard about the research in the 1920s at the Hawthorne Plant. The experimenters wanted to show that increased lighting would enhance productivity. They installed new lights, and productivity went up. Then they took the new light out. They expected productivity to decrease. Instead, productivity went up again!

I’ve heard various versions of this story and believed the lesson learned (that people would work harder when observed) as a fact. But a review of the original research published in the journal Human Factors showed that the fact wasn’t a fact.

Here is the Rest of the Story

First, because the research didn’t turn out the way they planned, it was never officially published. The original records were destroyed. Only second-hand stories about the research survived.

However, through a twist of fate, Levitt and List uncovered carbon copies of the documentation and some of the original data that had been archived at Cornell University (Levitt, S. D., and List, J. A., 2011.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, 224–238). These reports and data were reanalyzed using modern statistical analysis. The general conclusion was that the original studies were seriously flawed and no clear lessons could be learned (including the story about worker productivity going up when people were watched). This was documented in the journal Human Factors (Masumi R. Izawa, Michael D. French, and Alan Hedge. “Shining New Light on the Hawthorne Illumination Experiments” Volume 53, Issue 5, October 2011, Pages 528-547).

When is a Fact a Fact?

As an incident investigator, this revised story teaches an important lesson.

You can’t believe everything you hear.

Stories that I had heard about the Hawthorne Effect were just that – STORIES. Not Facts. Yet, when you hear stories over and over, you start thinking they are facts.

Perhaps you shouldn’t believe anything you hear. Stories are often inaccurate—especially second-hand stories. As an investigator, you can’t believe what you hear. You need real data that confirms or refutes the stories.