The John Henry effect is an experimental bias introduced into
social experiment
A social experiment is a method of psychological or sociological research that observes people's reactions to certain situations or events. The experiment depends on a particular social approach where the main source of information is the parti ...
s by
reactive behavior by the
control group
In the design of experiments, hypotheses are applied to experimental units in a treatment group.
In comparative experiments, members of a control group receive a standard treatment, a placebo, or no treatment at all. There may be more than one tr ...
.
In a controlled social experiment if a control is aware of their status as members of the control group and is able to compare their performance with that of the treatment group, members of the control group may actively work harder to overcome the "disadvantage" of being in the control group.
For example, if in an educational trial where the school classes who are in the treatment receive an extra support teacher, students who are in the control group may be induced to work harder to overcome that disadvantage.
The term was first used by Gary Saretsky (1972) to describe the behavior of
John Henry
John Henry most commonly refers to:
*John Henry (folklore)
John Henry may also refer to:
People
Artists and entertainers
* John Henry (actor) (1738–1794), Irish and early American actor
*Seán Ó hEinirí (1915–1998), known in English as John ...
, a legendary American steel driver in the 1870s who, when he heard his output was being compared with that of a steam drill, worked so hard to outperform the machine that he died in the process.
See also
*
Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect is a type of human behavior reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. The effect was discovered in the context of research conducted at the Hawthorn ...
*
Reactivity (psychology)
Reactivity is a phenomenon that occurs when individuals alter their performance or behavior due to the awareness that they are being observed. The change may be positive or negative, and depends on the situation. It is a significant threat to ...
*
John Henryism
John Henryism is a strategy for coping with prolonged exposure to stresses such as social discrimination by expending high levels of effort, which results in accumulating physiological costs.
Origins
The term was conceived in the 1970s by ...
References
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:John Henry Effect
Social phenomena
Experimental bias