Hawthorne Effect

Biological Parallel

Guppies alter their foraging behavior when they detect predator chemical cues or visual attention—they become more cautious, form tighter schools, and change feeding locations. The mere presence of observation changes behavior because being watched correlates with danger in evolutionary history. Similarly, ravens and crows perform better on cognitive tasks when other ravens watch, suggesting audience effects evolved in socially competitive species. The Hawthorne Effect isn't a quirk of human psychology; it's an adaptive response to being observed that exists across social animals where attention signals either threat or reputational consequence.