Hawthorne effect Hear it!

Hawthorne effect definition

☆ Hawthorne effect

improvement in performance, as by workers or students, resulting from mere awareness that experimental attempts are being made to bring about improvement

Etymology: after the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Co. in Cicero, Ill., where studies of worker performance were made in 1927

Webster's New World College Dictionary Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio.
Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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