John Henry Effect Part II

Simply put, the “John Henry Effect” posits that humans will put forth more effort and energy in order to “beat” a machine. It’s about competitiveness, but also about unintended consequences where people might push themselves to the breaking point like John Henry did. It’s true that he beat a steam drill, but he died from the effort. 

The Effect has been extrapolated to other situations involving a control and a treatment group. The control group has no special treatment and the “treatment” group gets something different. Sometimes this happens in schools. Let’s say a new reading curriculum is piloted in a few classrooms. If the John Henry Effect applies, it would mean that the control group, the teachers who did not get the new curriculum, would work harder. This could be because they want to show that the old curriculum is better or they don’t want to “lose” to the new curriculum. 

Obviously, this doesn’t happen whenever some new treatment is applied. Considering human nature, our competitiveness, and how we may not always do things for the best of reasons, it might make us pause.There may be more complexity and might be worth looking at experiments more closely and thinking about the possibility, and to what extent, the John Henry Effect may have an effect on the results.