Editing Hawthorne effect (section)

== Relay assembly experiments ==
In 1927, researchers conducted an experiment where they chose two female workers as test subjects and asked them to choose four other women to join the test group. Until 1928, the team of women worked in a separate room, assembling telephone [[relay]]s.

Output was measured mechanically by counting how many finished relays each worker dropped down a chute. To establish a baseline productivity level, the measurement was begun in secret two weeks before the women were moved to the experiment room, and then continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, a supervisor discussed changes in their productivity. 

Some of the variables were:
* Giving the workers two 5-minute breaks (which they said they preferred beforehand) and then switching to two 10-minute breaks. Productivity increased, but when they were given six 5-minute breaks, productivity decreased because many rests broke the workers' flow.
* Providing soup or coffee with a sandwich in the morning and snacks in the evening. This increased productivity.
* Changing the end of the workday from 5:00 to 4:30 and eliminating the Saturday workday. This increased productivity.

Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. It is said that this reflects natural adaption to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment. Researchers concluded that the workers worked harder because they thought that they were being monitored individually.

Researchers hypothesized that choosing one's own coworkers, working as a group, being treated as special (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the productivity increase. One interpretation, mainly due to Elton Mayo's studies,<ref name="Mayo">Mayo, Elton (1945) [https://archive.org/details/socialproblemsof00mayo ''Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization'']. Boston: Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, p. 72</ref> was that "the six individuals became a team and the team gave itself wholeheartedly and spontaneously to cooperation in the experiment." Further, there was a second relay assembly test room study whose results were not as significant as the first experiment.