"The Hawthorne Effect" SCI 105

Group Worksheet #3 – Take Home – We’ll discuss these at the next class meeting

Members: __________________ ____________________ _________________ ___________________

Roethlisberger and Dickson came up with a number of potential explanations for the (more or less) steady increase in productivity they witnessed over the course of the 13 periods. After numerous tests of these potential explanations, they finally conducted lengthy debriefings of the women and discovered (much to their amazement) that the women seemed to be responding more to the attention they were receiving as an isolated small group of workers than to the actual experimental manipulations.

This tendency for human subjects to behave somewhat differently when they know (or believe) they are part of an experiment (or just being observed) is termed: ______________________________

1. Come up with a list of four or five ways that the researchers might have improved the design of their research, so that they might have actually assessed the effects of the experimental manipulations. You may examine Carey, Chapters 2 & 3, for assistance.

2. What is the "Placebo Effect" and how is it related to what we’ve observed here?

3. What is "serendipity" and how is it related to what we’ve observed here?