Resumen de Experiments in the Social Sciences: Rethinking the Hawthorne Effect
The paper focuses on a particular undertheorized phenomenon in the experimentation of the social sciences: the Hawthorne effect, generally defined as the problem in experiments whereby subjects’ knowledge that they are in an experiment modifies their behaviour from what it would have been without the awareness of being an experimental subject. Although the Hawthorne effect is often mentioned in the methodological discussions of social science experimenters and in virtually all research design textbooks, the notion is often unsatisfactorily depicted, where contradictory definitions can be found in the literature. The paper reviews the standard definitions and common methodological strategies of experimenters for dealing with this type of ‘reactivity’. We focus, in particular, on a recent attempt by Zizzo to define and deal with this phenomenon. The paper shows the limitations of his conceptual strategy and reflects on the characteristics that an alternative definition should have in order to be useful for social science experimenters.
