Has someone such as a teacher, parent or coach
ever had high expectations for you and though you weren’t sure you could do it, you worked
really hard and achieved or even exceeded a goal? Congratulations, you just experienced the
Pygmalion effect. The Pygmalion or Rosenthal effect can be boiled
down to a single statement ‘higher expectations lead to higher performance.’ Your positive beliefs about a person’s capabilities
impact your behavior towards the person which in turn influences the person’s beliefs
about themselves. How they feel about themselves impacts their
behavior towards you. This confirms and strengthens your original
beliefs about them and so on, basically creating a cycle of challenging positivity. The term comes from a Greek mythology about
a sculptor named Pygmalion who carved an ivory statue of a woman so perfect that he fell
in love with his creation. In despair, Pygmalion prayed to Venus, the
goddess of love asking her to bring him a woman like the statue. She was so
inspired by his love that she brought the statue to life. Yeah. The secondary name for this phenomena makes
more sense to us. In 1963 Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal
tried an experiment using a controlled laboratory environment. He had two groups of students coach rats through
a maze, misinforming one group that their rats were specially bred to be smart and’maze
bright’, while telling the other group that their rats were dumb and ‘maze dull’. In actuality there was no difference between
the two groups of rats; all were just ordinary lab rats and randomly assigned to the bright
or dull group. However, during the experiment the ‘smart’
rats far outperformed the dumb rats. This showed that the expectations of the coaches
and how they trained their rats as a result of those expectations affected the behavior
of the rats. Based on the success with his experiment,
Rosenthal conducted a large study, this time with humans at an elementary school. Working with principal Lenore F. Jacobson,
Rosenthal administered an IQ test to students at Spruce Elementary School in South San Francisco. Afterwards, teachers were told that some of
the students were "intellectual bloomers" and should do better academically as compared
to their classmates. The teachers were given a list of the bloomers’
names. In reality, randomly 20% of the students were
designated as "intellectual bloomers". Over the next school year, the designated
bloomers excelled as predicted. At the end of the study, 8 months later Rosenthal
once again tested students using the same IQ test. In all grades, students in both the 20% bloomer
group and the regular student control group showed on average a gain in IQ from the first
IQ test to the second IQ test. However, the intellectual bloomers gained
more IQ points on average, relative to the regular students. Overall, in grades first through six, the
bloomer group showed about a 12 point gain as compared to 8.5 point gain for the control
group. First and second grade bloomers showed significant
IQ gains, on average upwards of 27 points. This led to the conclusion that teacher expectations
in their students’ potential, particularly for young children, can influence student
achievement. Rosenthal’s study reverberated through the
education system. Basically everyone has great potential, if
only their teacher would encourage it! Rosenthal’s experiment was somewhat controversial
and criticized for weak methodology. Some felt that the IQ test Resenthal used
was flawed. Teachers at the school ended up feeling angry
and betrayed. Since then researchers have endeavored to
recreate Rosenthal’s study with varying degrees of success. Results seem to be most fruitful when the
teacher’s behavior is subconsciously driven, meaning that results tend to be not as strong
when a teacher consciously creates expectations and alters their actions as opposed to truly
believing in someone and acting accordingly. Even so the Pygmalion effect is a powerful
tool and skills for encouraging the effect are taught in educator and leadership management
courses, and are practiced in businesses, militaries and schools around the world. So what happens when a person has negative
expectations of you? Yes, the opposite of the Pygmalion Effect
is true, lower expectations lead to lower performance, it’s called the Golem effect. The effect is named after the golem, a magical
clay creature in Jewish mythology. In one legend, the golem was brought to life
by a Rabbi to protect the Jews of Prague. However, over time, the golem was corrupted
to the point of being a danger to those he was supposed to serve and had to be destroyed. As you can imagine the Pygmalion and Golem
effects can have severe ramifications when a teacher, boss, coach, etc has a personal
bias for or against a particular ethnicity, gender or frankly any other way people categorize
other people. Also both effects are self-fulfilling prophecies. Whether the expectations come from us or others,
the effect manifests in the same fashion. An interesting, non scientific experiment
variation on these phonomeon was carried out by teacher Iowan Jane Elliott in 1968. Searching for a way to explain racism to her
all white 3rd grade class the day after after Martin Luther King was assassinated, Elliott
segregated her students into “blue-eyed” and “brown-eyed” groups. On the first day, she told the class that
blue-eyed people were superior and treated the students accordingly. Among other injustices brown-eyed students
had five fewer minutes of recess and weren’t allowed to play with the blue-eyed students. In class the brown eyed students were forced
to sit at the back of the classroom. Throughout the day Elliot made various comments
about the inferiority of brown-eyed students. The following day, the status was reversed,
with brown-eyed students being superior and the blue-eyed students considered inferior. Elliot found that during the day they were
considered inferior, the students’ work suffered. Also she was shocked to discover how quickly
the attitudes of children in the superior group turned vicious and discriminating. Afterwards the exercise was over, Elliot had
her class write essays on the experience. She ended up getting some of the essays published
in her local newspaper. The reaction to Elliott’s experiment was
explosive and she was ostracized in her town. However she went on to become a diversity
educator and some of her later work became the basis for modern corporate diversity training. So what does this all mean? Well, unfortunately you can’t control people’s
opinions of you. The truth is that ultimately no matter how
amazing you are, someone’s probably going to have a negative opinion of you and treat
you accordingly. So our best suggestion is to Pygmalion yourself. The mentor, teacher or boss you want or need
simply may not show up in your life. You can spend valuable time waiting around
for them or your can do some personal work and create some aspects of such a relationship
in yourself. So how can you apply the Pygmalion effect
to your personal, academic or professional life? Have high expectations for yourself and set
ambitious goals to reach. What would you like your life to look like
a year from now? Five years from now? Create a goal map for yourself, listing out
smaller steps to take that lead to achieving a big goal. Don’t forget to build in rewards for achieving
various mini goals along the way to bigger challenges. Try to develop and improve your sense of personal
responsibility. Explore and cultivate your strengths and passions. What do you like to do? What are you interested in? Sure work on weaknesses too, but focus on
your strengths. Improving a weakness frequently means that
you can go from mediocre to okay or not bad. But, when you work on your strengths, you
can strive for mastery or excellence. Manage your weaknesses so they aren’t hindrances,
but put the majority of your energy into cultivating your strengths. Write out a personal peptalk that you can
read aloud when you’re frustrated, anxious, discouraged or having a bad day. Your peptalk should mention some of your past
achievements, things you like about yourself and plans for the future. Surround yourself with thoughtful, positive
people who support you and your goals and have goals of their own they are striving
towards. Sometimes it’s not possible to remove negative
or unhealthy people from your life. As much as possible ignore the haters. Are you whom others say you are, or are you
who you want to be? You can also practice the Pygmalion effect
with other people. You don’t have to be their teacher or boss
to be a force for positive change in their lives. Have high yet realistic expectations of them. Listen attentively during conversations and
don’t cut your conversation partner off while they’re speaking. Offer encouragement. Be respectful and value other people’s time. In the famous book The 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Stephen R. Covey says “Treat a man
as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he
will become as he can and should be.” How can that quote play out in your life? Do you have a particular incident where the
pygmalion effect happened in your life? Let us know in the comments! Also, be sure to check out our other video
Scientifically Proven Best Ways to Study! Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t
forget to like, share, and subscribe. See you next time!
