Countering Hawthorne effect while traveling

About 75 years ago, while testing the validity of Scientific Management that had come to dominate the American Industry and Management style- Harvard University's Elton Mayo conducted a series of experiment in an electric factory known as Hawthorne works… he was trying to study the effect of illumination on a workers' productivity….His experiment led to some startling results that turned the Scientific Management theory head over heals…. These experiments were prophetically named as "illumination experiment" (for it lead the management scientists to question the Taylor's masterpiece of Scientific Management and enunciate a starkly different theory of Human Relations theory)...The Hawthorne studies have had a dramatic effect on management in organizations and how people react to different situations.

To put it simply Hawthorne effect says that people’s behavior and performance change following any new or increased attention.

Why do we travel??? Different people have different reasons to do the same… some just want to break the monotony that had set in their life, for some it’s a way to de-stress, for some it is a get together with people gathering at one place. Some want to see new places and add to their list of having visited the must-be visited places.

But for some it is a way of expression, of them… they differentiate themselves from others based on this wanderlust; they meet new people, see new cultures, question the status quo within and synthesize themselves to a better human being. For them the wise men say…. "Wandering one gathers Honey". But what if the experiences that one undergoes while traveling, gets mutilated…what if people who meet start behaving differently. Would it not hamper his very own growth process? And if it does…as it certainly does….then how to avoid it.

Well to put forth a very small example… what if I base my understanding about Egyptians on the interaction I have had with shopkeepers of Khan-e-Khalili or the touts of Luxor (and very frankly most of the foreign tourists start and end their Egypt experiences with these few places). Or conversely, what if a foreigner coming to India base his experiences on the aggressive and chauvinist touts and tour operators and shopkeepers of the Golden Triangle (and to be frank most of the foreigners visit these places in India). If one does form his opinions based on the following experiences, then his understanding about the host country is almost totally wrong… and then it gets registered somewhere… and whenever the name of the host country or a country in the same socio-economic bracket comes, he tends to deal with them with a set of prejudices (both positive and negative). So in a sense traveling become counter-productive. The synthesis of your personality happens on utterly false premises.

The problem here, of course if that because the above mentioned places see a high influx of tourist…therefore the behaviour pattern of the residents of these places has changed to a high degree- especially in front of tourists… the people start seeing a tourist as a potential customer and therefore the interactions are not man to man but service seeker to service provider… (I am going to write about a real life experience about this, in the coming part of my ongoing travelogue on Western Desert)

So how best to avoid such experiences? Avid travelers must have designed their own approaches to counter these… their methods may differ as per the individual's chemistry and likes and dislikes, and therefore my methods may not apply in every case… but what I am mentioning over here is a widely agreed methodology…. And therefore has a high degree of applicability.

1. Travel alone or in a very small company- When you travel alone… you open yourself to a high degree of quality experiences. One because of the lack of companionship, you tend to search for the same among local populace and two because lack of company gives you a lot of freedom to experiment. In the worse case try to travel with a very small company…. This again will ensure a better interface with the local populace… but would not be able to create the magic of traveling alone.

2. Travel shoestring… traveling shoestring means that one needs to find ways of survival… this will essentially mean that you search for methods of survival… and therefore you will interact with the locals all the more to ascertain ways of survival in the alien land… traveling on high budget means you are tucked away in a comfortable surrounding and therefore do not get the real feel.

3. Travel off beat… Offbeat does not mean missing out the usual circuit… but after all how much time does a usual circuit takes…compress the much talked about monuments in a day or two… utilize rest of it for traveling offbeat… After all, there are so many things to be discovered in off beat places… they aren’t mentioned in the guide books and therefore they are off beat… Another advantage is that the local people in off beat places are not spoilt due to influx of tourists and therefore you can have the most transparent interaction with these set of people.

4. Travel the way locals do… If in Egypt… use more of Microbuses, if in India use Buses, trucks, tractors, bullock cart…whatever…using the localized transport means that you meet the commoners and not the elites of a society….By flying in air you don’t meet those who live on the ground.

5. Travel for long periods… short vacations at best are vacations… not a real travel experience… when one travels for longer period…his contact with his previous life diminishes with each passing day… and then after 4-5 days, he can actually stop thinking about things back home and looking forward to things then and there…and then the real travel experience begins..

Well find your own ways….there must be numerous more ways to negate the Hawthorne effect… but first you need to travel…so stop thinking and pack your bags… World is safer and cheaper than what most of us perceive.