14) Hawthorne experiment

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.»

The Hawthorne experiments were groundbreaking studies in human relations that were conducted between 1924 and 1932 at Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works in Chicago. Originally designed as illumination studies to determine the relationship between lighting and productivity, the initial tests were sponsored by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1927 a research team from the Harvard Business School was invited to join the studies after the illumination tests drew unanticipated results. Two additional series of tests, the relay-assembly tests and the bank-wiring tests, followed the illumination tests. The studies assumed the label Hawthorne experiments or studies from the location of the Western Electric plant. Concluded by 1932, the Hawthorne studies, with emphasis on a new interpretation of group behavior, were the basis for the school of human relations.

15)

Self-identity and socialization

Self-identity

We all have various perceptions, feelings, and be­liefs about who we are and what we are like. Many sociologists and psychologists have expressed in­terest in how the individual develops and modi­fies a sense of self because of social interaction. The work of sociologists Charles Horion Cooley and Ceorge Herbert Mead, pioneers of the inter-actionist approach, has been especially useful in furthering our understanding of these important issues.

In the early 1900s, Charles Horion Cooley advanced the belief that we learn who we are by interacting with others. Our view of ourselves, then, comes not only from direct contemplation of our personal qualities, but also from our impressions of how others per­ceive us. Cooley used the phrase looking-glass self to emphasize that the self is the product of our social interactions with other people.

The process of developing a self-identity has three phases. First, we imagine how we appear to others—to relatives, friends, even strangers on the street. Then we imagine how others perceive us (attractive, intelligent, shy, strange, etc.). Fi­nally, we develop some sort of feeling about our­selves, such as respect or shame, as a result of these impressions (Cooley, 1902:152).

A critical but subtle aspect of Cooley's looking-glass sell is that the self results from an individu­al's "imagination" of how others view him or her. As a result, we can develop self-identities based on incorrect perceptions of how others see us. A student may react strongly to a teacher's critic ism and decide (wrongly) that the instructor views the student as stupid. This can easily be converted into a negative self-identity through the following process: (1) the teacher criticized me; (2) the teacher must think that I'm stupid; (3) I am stu­pid. Yet self-identities are also subject to change. I f the student above received an "A" at the end of the course, the person might no longer feel stu­pid.

SOCIALIZATION

All researchers would agree that both biological inheritance and the processes of socialization play a role in human development. There is no con­sensus, however, regarding the relative impor­tance of these factors, which has led to what is called the nature versus nurture (or heredity versus environment) debate. We can more easily con­trast the impact of heredity and environment if we examine situations in which one factor oper­ates almost entirely without the other.

The socialization process continues throughout all stages of the human life cycle. In cultures less complex than our own, stages of development are marked by specific ceremonies. Many societies have definite rites of passage that dramatize and validate changes in a person's status. For exam­ple, a young Aborigine woman in Australia will be honored at a ceremony at the time of her first menstruation. During these festivities, her first unborn daughter is betrothed to a grown man. Hence the expression is heard that "there is no such thing as an unmarried woman". For the Aborigines, there is a sharp divid­ing line between childhood and the responsibili­ties of adult life.