Hawthorne effect

From RationalWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Tell me about your mother

Psychology

Icon psychology.svg
Let us examine...
Random examples

The Hawthorne Effect is an observed phenomenon in experimental testing, in which the subject's behavior changes as a result of being observed. It sometimes leads to fallacious conclusions involving magical thinking if it is not carefully accounted for. It is strongly related to the confirmation bias.

As an example, if an experimenter were to ask a subject how many times he had heard the word "kangaroo" in the previous week, the subject might answer one or two (if that). But if the subject is asked the same question the following week, they will probably have noticed that he had heard "kangaroo" from several people and a half-dozen times on the television.

In this situation, the results do not mean that the instance of "kangaroo" suddenly skyrocketed from one week to the next. Instead, the more reasonable conclusion is just that the subject was paying much more attention to "kangaroo" the second week, after it was called to their attention.

One real-world example of the Hawthorne Effect is displayed, possibly, in response to high-stakes educational testing. School systems commonly respond to testing under No Child Left Behind by taking measures that improve schools' performance on standardized tests (e.g. selective retention of students in critical years, limited effort to deter low-performing students from dropping out, reclassification of students as special-needs) without necessarily improving their educational success. (In general terms, it is usually much easier to manipulate — "game," if your prefer — statistics that represent reality than it is to change the underlying reality itself.)

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support