PSYCHOLOGY Concepts and Theories: Psychological Research Concepts

Friday, October 6, 2023

Hawthorne effect in psychology

The Hawthorne effect is a psychological finding that people modify their behavior when they become aware that they are being watched. The effect is named for experiments at the Western Electric plant in Cicero Illinois.

The researchers looked for changes in production associated with changes in the work place but found that worked increased production in response to being observed.

For a review of Hawthorne Effect research, see McCambridge et al. (2014).

Reference

McCambridge, J., Witton, J., & Elbourne, D. R. (2014). Systematic review of the Hawthorne effect: new concepts are needed to study research participation effects. Journal of clinical epidemiology, 67(3), 267–277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2013.08.015

To read more, also see

Parsons H. What happened at Hawthorne? Science. 1974;183:922–932.

Sommer R. The Hawthorne dogma. Psychol Bull. 1968;70(6 Pt 1):592–595

Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is www.suttong.com

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Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Learning curve and S-Curve

The learning curve illustrates the relationship between learning and experience and is often presented as an S-curve. At first, progress is slow—the curve of learning rises a little. Then, with experience, learning rises rapidly up to a point when it seems to level off at a person’s level of proficiency. This curve has many names such as progress curve, startup curve, and experience curve.

We should keep in mind that rates of learning vary. Not everyone learns at the same pace. And many factors affect learning. We should also remember that although S-curves have been applied to many relationships in business and the social and political sciences, there are other patterns to consider like linear relationships, J-curves, and U-curves (U-curves may also be inverted).

Below is an idealised S-curve I created in Excel. As experience increases so does performance but the relationship is not a straight line (i.e., linear). At some point, the learner peaks and more experience stays about the same (i.e., learning plateaus).