improvement in the performance of employees, students, etc, brought about by making changes in working methods, resulting from research into means of improving performance
Compare iatrogenic, placebo effect
Word origin
from the Western Electric Company's Hawthorne works in Chicago, USA, where it was discovered during experiments in the 1920s
Hawthorne effect in American English
US
improvement in performance, as by workers or students, resulting from mere awareness that experimental attempts are being made to bring about improvement
Word origin
after the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Co. in Cicero, Ill., where studies of worker performancewere made in 1927