The Placebo effect and the Hawthorne effect have been in our lives forever. When we were babies to toddlers our mommies would give us a kiss to make it all better when we got a boo boo. As we grew older, we grew out of the kiss to make it better. It moved on to if you lay down the pain will go away. Then it became medicine makes it better. We believed all these things as we grew up. The kiss made the boo boo stop hurting. Laying down made the headache go away. Medicine, was a gift that could fix our problems.
I think that the Hawthorne effect shows up a lot in school. We say what we think our teachers want us to say. We try and push ourselves to the breaking point to live up to what our parents expect of us. As teenagers, we have to be what others expect us to be. We never get the chance to fully express ourselves, because we're so busy living up to others' expectations of us. We change the way we act because people watch us to see if we're doing the right thing.
A lot of times, when I get scared or something hurts, I get told that it's all in my head. You are just making yourself scared. You are making yourself be sick. Being told this actually gets frustrating after a while. Once you get told it's all in your head enough times, it actually becomes something to be all in your head. You start thinking more actually causing yourself to be scared and in pain. because you've always been told that it's just in your head. I think it's not that good to tell us it's in our heads, because we'll actually believe it at some point.
Really interesting idea about how the Hawthorne Effect can apply to our everyday teenage lives. I never thought about it like that. It's interesting to think about how different our lives would be without the pressure from others.
ReplyDeletePeople's brains work in the strangest ways. Imagine telling some non-human life form that you don't want to do something you would otherwise do because there are others watching (who might not even care, for all you know). Or, imagine saying that you will work harder do a better job at something because others are watching (again, who might not even be interested in what you're doing). This life form would not grasp the idea, unless it had lived with humans all its life. It's the weirdest thing. People come pre-programmed with a desire to please, regardless if by doing so, they are acting or thinking in a way they are opposed to. From a very young age, children pick up cues to just do what everyone does and not stand out; do what you're "supposed to do", or "what's best"- i.e. do exactly what the teacher wants, in the exact manner the teacher wants, because that is what is important.
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