In 1924 America’s National Research Council sent two engineers to supervise a series of experiments at a telephone-parts factory called the Hawthorne Plant near Chicago. It hoped they would learn how shop-floor lighting (1)_____ workers’ productivity. Instead, the studies ended (2)_____ giving their name to the “Hawthorne effect,” the extremely influential idea that the very (3)_____ of being experimented upon changed subjects’ behavior.
The idea arose because of the (4)_____ behavior of the women in the plant. According to (5)_____ of the experiments, their hourly output rose when lighting was increased, but also when it was dimmed. It did not (6)_____ what was done in the experiment; (7)_____ something was changed, productivity rose. A(n) (8)_____ that they were being experimented upon seemed to be (9)_____ to alter workers’ behavior (10)_____ itself.
After several decades, the same data were (11)_____ to econometric analysis. The Hawthorne experiments had another surprise in store. (12)_____ the descriptions on record, no systematic (13)_____ was found that levels of productivity were related to changes in lighting.
It turns out that the peculiar way of conducting the experiments may have led to (14)_____ interpretation of what happened. (15)_____, lighting was always changed on a Sunday. When work started again on Monday, output (16)_____ rose compared with the previous Saturday and (17)_____ to rise for the next couple of days. (18)_____, a comparison with data for weeks when there was no experimentation showed that output always went up on Mondays. Workers (19)_____ to be diligent for the first few days of the week in any case, before (20)_____ a plateau and then slackening off. This suggests that the alleged “Hawthorne effect” is hard to pin down.
