watercooler effect

English edit

Noun edit

watercooler effect (plural watercooler effects)

  1. Alternative form of water cooler effect.
    • 2004, Barton Kunstler, The Hothouse Effect: Intensify Creativity in Your Organization Using Secrets from History’s Most Innovative Communities, AMACOM, →ISBN, page 39:
      One of his first acts established public wells so that the nobility could no longer control the peasants’ critical access to water; this also generated a so-called watercooler effect that inspired people to gather freely and schmooze.
    • 2009, Kristyn Gorton, Media Audiences: Television, Meaning and Emotion, Edinburgh University Press, published 2013, →ISBN, page 151:
      Now programmes are lucky if they have a viewing figure reaching 8 million and this has changed both the parameters within drama and the way the industry measures what audiences think about a particular programme. It has also changed the notion of the ‘watercooler effect’.
    • 2021 spring, Joel Mokyr, “The Great Fake”, in City Journal[1], archived from the original on 2023-05-29:
      Perhaps by organizing company retreats, firms can make up for some of the lost watercooler effects.