This somehow reminds of a productivity study done with factory workers (sorry couldn't find a source of sime kind, so this if from memory). They had to carry out relativly simple manual labor taks, the goal of the study was to analyze if there is a link between productivity and brightness of the workplace. After increasing the brightness in the factory productivtiy was rising. So the brightness was increased again and again to find the optimal lighting. Some day workers were showing up wearing sunglasses. The actual reason why productivity rose wasn't the brightness but the attention those blue collar workers were getting from the scientist carrying out the study.
My guess is that when you are beeing monitored (no pun intended) productivity will always rise. Especially if you get a fancy curved surface display like in the microsoft study.