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Joe Manuel posted an update in the group
8 months ago (edited)Knowledge Shared = Knowledge Multiplied “Good to Know”
“The Pygmalion effect”
The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse performance.
The Pygmalion effect describes situations where someone’s high expectations improves our behaviour and therefore our performance in a given area. It suggests that we do better when more is expected of us.
Imagine you are beginning a new project at work. Your boss tells you that he’s really excited to see the final product because he knows you’re going to do well.
Since your boss has high expectations for your performance, he might give you more support during the project. Additionally, to meet his expectations, you may change your behaviour by spending more hours on the project, working overtime, and double-checking the quality of your work.
Since both your boss and you have changed your behaviour, the project may end up being more successful than it would originally have been if he hadn’t told you he believed in you. Your boss’ expectations made you work harder which led to improved performance and therefore a better outcome.
The Pygmalion effect is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell so much in love with the perfectly beautiful statue he created that the statue came to life.
The psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson present a view, that has been called into question as a result of later research findings, in their book Pygmalion in the Classroom; borrowing something of the myth by advancing the idea that teachers’ expectations of their students affect the students’ performance.
Rosenthal and Jacobson held that high expectations lead to better performance and low expectations lead to worse, both effects leading to self-fulfilling prophecy.
Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson’s study showed that children’s performance was enhanced if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from children. By the same token, if teachers were led to expect lower performance from children, then the children’s performance would be diminished. The authors purported that the study’s results supported the hypothesis that performance can be positively or negatively influenced by the expectations of others. This phenomenon is called the observer-expectancy effect.
Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson’s study : All students in a single California elementary school were given a disguised IQ test at the beginning of the study. These scores were not disclosed to teachers. Teachers were told that some of their students (about 20% of the school chosen at random) could be expected to be “intellectual bloomers” that year, doing better than expected in comparison to their classmates. The bloomers’ names were made known to the teachers. At the end of the study, all students were again tested with the same IQ test used at the beginning of the study. All six grades in both experimental and control groups showed a mean gain in IQ from before the test to after the test. However, first- and second-graders showed statistically significant gains favouring the experimental group of “intellectual bloomers.” This led to the conclusion that teacher expectations, particularly for the youngest children, can influence student achievement. Rosenthal believed that even attitude or mood could positively affect the students when the teacher was made aware of the “bloomers.”
