Hawthorne effect

The Hawthorne Effect is a phenomenon in organizational psychology that describes how people tend to modify their behavior when they know they are being observed or studied. This reaction is highly personal: some individuals may become nervous and decrease their performance, while others may feel an urge to increase their effort and improve their results.

The term originated from a series of experiments conducted between 1924 and 1932 at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works factory, led by researchers from Harvard Business School, including Elton Mayo.

Initially, the studies aimed to analyze how different changes in working conditions —such as lighting or working hours— affected productivity. However, researchers observed that performance improved regardless of the changes introduced. The conclusion was that the improvement was related to the attention received by the workers and the fact that they felt they were part of an experiment.

Since then, the concept has been used to explain how observation, monitoring, or participation in studies can temporarily influence people's behavior, something relevant in social research, performance evaluations, and organizational studies.