The central idea behind the Hawthorne effect, a term used as early as 1950 by Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger, is that changes in participants' behavior during the course of a study may be "related only to the special social situation and social treatment they received." French applied the term in reference to a set of studies begun in 1924 at the former Hawthorne (Cicero, Illinois) Works of the Western Electric Company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T.
Read more about Hawthorne Effect: History, Interpretation and Criticism
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