 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Katfish
Date: 2002-02-09 16:03
Do any of you remember reading in Psychology 101 about an experiment that became known as the Hawthorne effect? As I remember it, experiments were done on the enviorment of certain factories to see what effect it had on production. What was found was: regardless of what changes were made ( piping in music, changing lighting, changing temperature, etc. ) production went up for about a month then return to previous levels. I was wondering if you thought our obsession with changing equipment (new mouthpiece, ligature, barrel etc. ) is an example of this effect.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2002-02-09 19:42
I don't recall the name given to it (Hawthorne?), but the way I remember this, it was based on lighting adjustments made in a Western Electric factory. Investigators were all over the place checking light levels at workers' operating positions, then the lighting was increased to see if production rates would increase. Sure enough, they did. More measurementwere made, illumination was reduced downward, and production rates did not go down. In fact, there was a slight increase. Conclusion reached: the real reason for production increases was that the workers felt someone was paying attention to them, caring about their comfort and needs.
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Author: Aaron D.
Date: 2002-02-09 19:51
I believe that the change in production was actually due to the change in the environmental factors. The workers had grown accustom to the same work environment for years. When the workers were subsequently introduced into the new environment their production increased due to the new environmental factors not necessarly that they now felt that someone was paying attention to their comfots and needs.
This effect has been repeated in a classroom environment in some schools. Using the same environmental change, the lighting, students attention and productivity increased.
NOw this discussion has relatively nothing to do with the original question. I just believe we keep changing equipment because we think it is the equipment that is causing problems in our performance, not the person operating the equipment!!!
Ponder that one for a bit before you consider purchasing that new $300 kaspar off the internet!!!!!
Aaron D.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2002-02-09 22:08
I always thought that the Hawthorne Effect was nicknamed the "placebo effect", as about a month after any change (work related or music equipment related) all things return back to the way they previously were.
As has been stated ad nauseum on this board, your basic sound will eventually prevail under all equipment conditions.
One's unique and individual sound is largely based on pre - conditioned and already formed aural conceptions of tone quality established in the brain...GBK
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2002-02-10 07:52
It sounds very likely to me. at least one of the parameters.
Another could be that we do not want to feel we have wasted money or been conned so we believe in what we have just bought.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2002-02-10 15:22
From a quick scan of the above, I should think that this is a manifestation of the "resistance to change" phenomenon that [perhaps unhappily] is a "built-in" human reaction to something "new" , no matter how good it might be. We frequently discuss a "lack of progress" in clarinet design [keywork changes] etc, and feel that changes should be exhaustively investigated before adoption. In my prof. career, I was assigned to put into use a well-developed computer program for searching US patents in chem and chem-engr fields, I guess because I had shown interest in pet and pet-chem plant analytical and computerized control, via a few patents. It was greatly of interest to me to see the degree of acceptanc by our technical and legal personnel, some YES, some WELL,Maybe and some I Doubt!!, perhaps because of minor flaws. Happily [some 40 years ago] it was by and large a success, and now more comprehensive, as well as simplified, searching systems [as widely used in Internet searching] of this Boolean Logic based method are very common. ?Too much said? Don
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Author: Bob
Date: 2002-02-10 19:25
JMcCauley essentially has it correct as usually reported. It was the Western Electric Co. Hawthorne Works plant in Cicero,Illinois. What one concludes from the experiment is pretty much left up to one's own analysis.
That others were paying attention to them as individuals is often credited with the cause. I think of the term "placebo effect" as a more recent addtion to the language compared to the time of the Hawthorne study.
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