This is a phenomenon first noted way back in 1924 – several years before the era’s leading “can-do” guru, Herbert Hoover, led the nation into the Depression. Elton Mayo was trying to study the effect of lighting on productivity at a Western Electric plant in Hawthorne, Illinois. He divided workers into two groups. For the test group, he increased the illumination in their work area. Productivity went up. For the control group, he left the lighting the same. Productivity went up.
That made no sense to Mayo, so he tried another study. He took a group of female workers, gave them regularly scheduled rest periods, company paid lunches and shorter work weeks. Productivity went up. Eighteen months later, all those perks were eliminated. And productivity? It went up once again.