The Pygmalion Effect
Robert Rosenthal first discovered the Pygmalion Effect during his study in the year 1964 at Harvard. It is also known as the Rosenthal Effect, but Robert named it Pygmalion Effect after the Greek sculpture Pygmalion. The story goes that the Sculptor fell in love with the ivory statue of a woman he made, with the Gods, bringing her to life just for him to marry. His expectations aided in breathing life into the sculpture, which aligns with Rosenthal’s Pygmalion Effect. Our expectations have the power to alter reality.
Rosenthal challenged test subjects to coach rats through a maze. Half the group of subjects were told that their rats were extremely intelligent, while the other half were told that their rats were dumb, but in reality, all the rats were pretty much the same. During the experiment, the “intelligent” rats outperformed the “dumb” ones. This proved that the expectations of the test subject coaches influenced the performance of their respective rats. Rosenthal then went on to apply this theory to a Californian school to a class of elementary kids. Some teachers were told that they had exceptionally intelligent students and some average students. All the students had already done an IQ test and were found to be of average intelligence. However, at the end of the academic year, those students who were “exceptionally intelligent” to the teachers outperformed the others.
The Pygmalion Effect or Rosenthal Effect can best describe a phenomenon whereby higher expectations lead to a higher performance outcome. It can be best understood by a circle in which our beliefs about someone else’s abilities influence our actions towards that person. This action has a counter effect on that person’s beliefs about themselves. These beliefs about themselves influence their actions towards us, reinforcing our beliefs about that person. This is pretty much an unending cycle of events that keeps repeating itself.
For example, if a teacher expects student A to do well in her subject, she will go all out and help him in his studies. She would probably give the student extra practice exercises, extra coaching, and even explain his mistakes more elaborately to make sure he has completely understood the concept. Conversely, she would not spend as much time with the other students in the class because they are expected to be average by her. She has a preconceived notion that Student A is outstanding in her subject, and thereby her expectations from the other students are lower. This gives rise to a self-fulfilling prophecy, wherein low expectations create a hostile environment and bring out lower performance outcomes. On the other hand, high expectations create a positive and encouraging environment that yields higher performance outcomes.
Rosenthal later summarized the Pygmalion effect as “the phenomenon whereby one person’s expectation for another person’s behavior comes to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy” (American Psychologist, Nov. 2003, p. 839).
