Pygmalion effect

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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. [1] It 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. [2] Rosenthal and Jacobson held that high expectations lead to better performance and low expectations lead to worse, [3] both effects leading to self-fulfilling prophecy.

Contents

According to the Pygmalion effect, the targets of the expectations internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly; a similar process works in the opposite direction in the case of low expectations. The idea behind the Pygmalion effect is that increasing the leader's expectation of the follower's performance will result in better follower performance.

Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regard to education and social class. The Pygmalion effect remains controversial among social psychologists, because researchers have repeatedly failed to replicate the original finding of a strong, statistically significant effect. [4]

Rosenthal–Jacobson study

Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson's study showed that children's performance was enhanced if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from children. [5] 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. Rosenthal argued that biased expectancies could affect reality and create self-fulfilling prophecies. [6]

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 favoring 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." The teacher may pay closer attention to and even treat the child differently in times of difficulty.

Rosenthal predicted that elementary school teachers may subconsciously behave in ways that facilitate and encourage the students' success. When finished, Rosenthal theorized that future studies could be implemented to find teachers who would encourage their students naturally without changing their teaching methods. Rosenthal and Jacobson's study of the Pygmalion effect was criticized for both weak methodology and lack of replicability (see Pygmalion in the Classroom ).

The prior research that motivated this study was conducted in 1911 by psychologists regarding the case of Clever Hans, a horse that gained notoriety because it was supposed to be able to read, spell, and solve math problems by using its hoof to answer. Many skeptics suggested that questioners and observers were unintentionally signaling Clever Hans. For instance, whenever Clever Hans was asked a question the observers' demeanor usually elicited a certain behavior from the subject that in turn confirmed their expectations. For example, Clever Hans would be given a math problem to solve, and the audience would get very tense the closer he tapped his foot to the right number, thus giving Hans the clue he needed to tap the correct number of times. [7]

Mediator - leadership behaviour

Leadership was identified by Eden and Shani as a mediator of the Pygmalion effect. [8] The study discovered that trainees with strong command potential gave instructors better overall leadership evaluations than trainees in the control group. According to a later analysis of the survey by Eden, [9] instructors were rated more positively on each of the four management leadership dimensions by Bowers and Seashore. [10] Eden referred to this phenomenon as the Pygmalion leadership style (PLS). PLS includes consistently promoting, supporting, and reinforcing expectations, which leads to the subordinates adopting, accepting, or internalizing those expectations. Notably, those instructors needed to be made aware of their different manner of treating the trainees, supporting Rosenthal's claim that how instructors treat high-expectations people are not consciously intended or deliberate.

Mediator - The Galatea effect

The second mediator of the Pygmalion effect is the direct result of PLS, labeled by Eden and Ravid as the Galatea effect, [11] which is the effect of directly manipulating trainees' self-expectations of themselves. The PLS leadership behaviors have the chance to raise trainees' expectations of their performance. In the IDF training program study, Eden and Ravid observed that raising instructors' expectations for particular trainees led to both greater performance (the Pygmalion effect) and increased self-expectations for those trainees. [11] The research also demonstrated that improving these trainees' performance levels may be accomplished by directly raising their expectations by telling them—rather than their instructors—that they had high potential.

Criticism of the Pygmalion effect

The educational psychologist Robert L. Thorndike described the poor quality of the Pygmalion study. The problem with the study was that the instrument used to assess the children's IQ scores was seriously flawed. [12] The average reasoning IQ score for the children in one regular class was in the mentally disabled range, a highly unlikely outcome in a regular class in a garden variety school. In the end, Thorndike concluded that the Pygmalion findings were worthless. Quoting a colleague, Thorndike wrote about the measurement problems of the study in this way: "When the clock strikes thirteen, doubt is cast not only on the last stroke but also all that have gone before" (p. 710). It is more likely that the rise in IQ scores from the mentally disabled range was the result of regression toward the mean, not teacher expectations. Moreover, a meta-analysis conducted by Raudenbush [13] showed that when teachers had gotten to know their students for two weeks, the effect of a prior expectancy induction was reduced to virtually zero.

A 2005 meta-analysis of 35 years of research on teacher expectations found that, while self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom do occur, the effects are usually small and temporary. It is unknown whether self-fulfilling prophecies affect intelligence or have an otherwise harmful effect. The cause of the effect may be because teachers' expectations of students are accurate, and not because they are self-fulfilling. [4] Rosenthal had originally claimed the treatment group's IQ gain over time was "24.8 IQ points in excess of the gain shown by the controls," and that these gains were persistent and widespread, but several studies since the 1980s have failed to replicate these results. Instead, they have found only a very weak effect, and only in a very small minority (5 to 10%) of students. The marginal performance gains have also been found to "reset" after a period of just weeks. [4] [2] [12] [14]

Students' views of teachers

Teachers are also affected by the children in the classroom. Teachers reflect what is projected into them by their students. An experiment done by Jenkins and Deno (1969) submitted teachers to a classroom of children who had either been told to be attentive, or unattentive, to the teachers' lecture. They found that teachers who were in the attentive condition would rate their teaching skills as higher. [15] Similar findings by Herrell (1971) suggested that when a teacher was preconditioned to classrooms as warm or cold, the teacher would start to gravitate towards their precondition. [16] To further this concept, Klein (1971) did the same kind of study involving teachers still unaware of any precondition to the classroom but with the class full of confederates who were instructed to act differently during periods over the course of the lecture. "Klein reported that there was little difference between students' behaviors in the natural and the positive conditions." [17] In a more observational study designed to remove the likes of the Hawthorne effect, Oppenlander (1969) studied the top and bottom 20% of students in the sixth grade from a school that tracks and organizes its students under such criteria. [17]

Application in the workplace

The behavior a leader directs at an employee can affect employee behavior consistent with the leader's expectations. Leader expectations of an employee may alter leader behavior. [18] For example, a leader may expect an employee to be engaged in learning activities and in turn, the employee may engage in more learning, consistent with the idea self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders have power over employees (including the power to fire an employee) and, thus, behavior change in employees may be the result of that power differential. [18]

Application in military settings

The Pygmalion effect is further confirmed in military settings after its application in the workplace. Eden and Shani used instructors and trainees from Israeli Defense Force (IDF) training programs in 1982 to experiment with a military setting to verify the Pygmalion effect. They randomly chose a group of trainees and told the instructors that they had exceptional leadership potential. In turn, this group outperformed the control groups on four objective tests. This study was noteworthy since it used adult Israeli soldiers as a sample rather than the previous sample of the American child, inferring that the Pygmalion effect could be applied to different contexts rather than only the original classroom setting where it was originally noticed and replicated, confirming its generalisability. [8]

Application in nursing

The Pygmalion effect has been noted in several non-educational contexts. For instance, in a nursing home, nurses were told that some patients would progress more quickly in their rehabilitation than others. These patients demonstrated lower levels of depression and required hospitalization less frequently than those with average expectations. [19]

The Pygmalion effect has also been discussed in relation to treating alcohol dependence since it was discovered that therapists who characterized their clients as "motivated" had a lower dropout rate than those who labeled them as "unmotivated". [20]

Gender limitations

One significant constraint of the practical application of Pygmalion research is the unresolved issue of whether the Pygmalion effect operates uniformly across genders. Notably, studies conclude a lack of the Pygmalion effect for women. This suggests that, unlike their male colleagues, the higher standards for female leaders could only sometimes result in increased subordinate performance.

Female subordinates have been utilized in many studies, which in turn failed to demonstrate a significant correlation between the Pygmalion effect. For instance, King's unpublished research in 1970 provided two examples of failed Pygmalion effect attempts that both primarily involved female subordinates. The Pygmalion effect was undetectable in Sutton and Woodman's research of female principal attendants in the retail industry. [21]

Ethical limitations

The traditional Pygmalion practice entails deception, which may be considered unethical in actual organizational contexts. According to some researchers, it shouldn't be made a default practice in these real-life circumstances. Managers have to be deceived by their boss or staff personnel during the implementation of this manipulation. If the deception were revealed and revealed publicly, it could lead to a significant deterioration of trust within the workplace. [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's belief or expectation that the prediction would come true. In the phenomena, people tend to act the way they have been expected to in order to make the expectations come true. Self-fulfilling prophecies are an example of the more general phenomenon of positive feedback loops. A self-fulfilling prophecy can have either negative or positive outcomes. Merely applying a label to someone or something can affect the perception of the person/thing and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Interpersonal communication plays a significant role in establishing these phenomena as well as impacting the labeling process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Expectation (epistemic)</span> Anticipation that a future event or consequence is likely

In the case of uncertainty, expectation is what is considered the most likely to happen. An expectation, which is a belief that is centered on the future, may or may not be realistic. A less advantageous result gives rise to the emotion of disappointment. If something happens that is not at all expected, it is a surprise. An expectation about the behavior or performance of another person, expressed to that person, may have the nature of a strong request, or an order; this kind of expectation is called a social norm. The degree to which something is expected to be true can be expressed using fuzzy logic. Anticipation is the emotion corresponding to expectation.

Expectancy theory proposes that an individual will behave or act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a specific behavior over others due to what they expect the result of that selected behavior will be. In essence, the motivation of the behavior selection is determined by the desirability of the outcome. However, at the core of the theory is the cognitive process of how an individual processes the different motivational elements. This is done before making the ultimate choice. The outcome is not the sole determining factor in making the decision of how to behave.

The halo effect is the proclivity for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings. The halo effect is "the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality." The halo effect is a cognitive bias which can prevent someone from forming an image of a person, a product or a brand based on the sum of all objective circumstances at hand.

The observer-expectancy effect is a form of reactivity in which a researcher's cognitive bias causes them to subconsciously influence the participants of an experiment. Confirmation bias can lead to the experimenter interpreting results incorrectly because of the tendency to look for information that conforms to their hypothesis, and overlook information that argues against it. It is a significant threat to a study's internal validity, and is therefore typically controlled using a double-blind experimental design.

Expectancy violations theory (EVT) is a theory of communication that analyzes how individuals respond to unanticipated violations of social norms and expectations. The theory was proposed by Judee K. Burgoon in the late 1970s and continued through the 1980s and 1990s as "nonverbal expectancy violations theory", based on Burgoon's research studying proxemics. Burgoon's work initially analyzed individuals' allowances and expectations of personal distance and how responses to personal distance violations were influenced by the level of liking and relationship to the violators. The theory was later changed to its current name when other researchers began to focus on violations of social behavior expectations beyond nonverbal communication.

In psychology, self-efficacy is an individual's belief in their capacity to act in the ways necessary to reach specific goals. The concept was originally proposed by the psychologist Albert Bandura in 1977.

Pygmalion in the Classroom is a 1968 book by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson about the effects of teacher expectation on first and second grade student performance. The idea conveyed in the book is that if teachers' expectations about student ability are manipulated early, those expectations will carry over to affect teacher behavior, which in turn will influence how the students will perform on an IQ test. Inducing high expectations in teachers will lead to high levels of IQ test performance. Inducing low expectations, will lead to low IQ test performance.

Robert Rosenthal was a German-born American psychologist who was a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. His interests included self-fulfilling prophecies, which he explored in a well-known study of the Pygmalion effect: the effect of teachers' expectations on students.

Lenore F Jacobson was principal of an elementary school in the South San Francisco Unified School District in 1963 when she started a correspondence with Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal which led to the influential Pygmalion Effect study.

In social research, particularly in psychology, the term demand characteristic refers to an experimental artifact where participants form an interpretation of the experiment's purpose and subconsciously change their behavior to fit that interpretation. Typically, demand characteristics are considered an extraneous variable, exerting an effect on behavior other than that intended by the experimenter. Pioneering research was conducted on demand characteristics by Martin Orne.

Disconfirmed expectancy is a psychological term for what is commonly known as a failed prophecy. According to the American social psychologist Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, disconfirmed expectancies create a state of psychological discomfort because the outcome contradicts expectancy. Upon recognizing the falsification of an expected event an individual will experience the competing cognitions, "I believe [X]," and, "I observed [Y]." The individual must either discard the now disconfirmed belief or justify why it has not actually been disconfirmed. As such, disconfirmed expectancy and the factors surrounding the individual's consequent actions have been studied in various settings.

Identity negotiation refers to the processes through which people reach agreements regarding "who is who" in their relationships. Once these agreements are reached, people are expected to remain faithful to the identities they have agreed to assume. The process of identity negotiation thus establishes what people can expect of one another. Identity negotiation thus provides the interpersonal "glue" that holds relationships together.

Behavioral confirmation is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people's social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations. The phenomenon of belief creating reality is known by several names in literature: self-fulfilling prophecy, expectancy confirmation, and behavioral confirmation, which was first coined by social psychologist Mark Snyder in 1984. Snyder preferred this term because it emphasizes that it is the target's actual behavior that confirms the perceiver's beliefs.

The Dr. Fox effect is a correlation observed between teacher expressiveness, content coverage, student evaluation and student achievement. This effect also allows insight to other related effects and relationships between student achievement and evaluations of the teacher.

Reactivity is a phenomenon that occurs when individuals alter their performance or behavior due to the awareness that they are being observed. The change may be positive or negative, and depends on the situation. It is a significant threat to a research study's external validity and is typically controlled for using blind experiment designs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereotype</span> Generalized but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing

In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information. A stereotype does not necessarily need to be a negative assumption. They may be positive, neutral, or negative.

Thin-slicing is a term used in psychology and philosophy to describe the ability to find patterns in events based only on "thin slices", or narrow windows, of experience. The term refers to the process of making very quick inferences about the state, characteristics or details of an individual or situation with minimal amounts of information. Research has found that brief judgments based on thin-slicing are similar to those judgments based on much more information. Judgments based on thin-slicing can be as accurate, or even more so, than judgments based on much more information.

Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well. Job performance, studied academically as part of industrial and organizational psychology, also forms a part of human resources management. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does. This differentiates it from more encompassing constructs such as organizational performance or national performance, which are higher-level variables.

The Golem effect is a psychological phenomenon in which lower expectations placed upon individuals either by supervisors or the individual themselves lead to poorer performance by the individual. This effect is mostly seen and studied in educational and organizational environments. It is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy.

References

  1. ↑ Brookover, Wilbur B.; Rosenthal, Robert; Jacobson, Lenore (April 1969). "Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development". American Sociological Review. 34 (2): 283. doi:10.2307/2092211. ISSN   0003-1224.
  2. 1 2 Raudenbush, Stephen W. (1984). "Magnitude of teacher expectancy effects on pupil IQ as a function of the credibility of expectancy induction: A synthesis of findings from 18 experiments". Journal of Educational Psychology. 76: 85–97. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.76.1.85.
  3. ↑ Mitchell, Terence R.; Daniels, Denise (2003). "Motivation". In Walter C. Borman; Daniel R. Ilgen; Richard J. Klimoski (eds.). Handbook of Psychology (volume 12). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 229. ISBN   0-471-38408-9.
  4. 1 2 3 Jussim, Lee; Harber, Kent D. (2005). "Teacher Expectations and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Knowns and Unknowns, Resolved and Unresolved Controversies". Personality and Social Psychology Review. 9 (2): 131–155. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0902_3. ISSN   1088-8683.
  5. ↑ Robert Rosenthal; Lenore Jacobson (September 1968). "Pygmalion in the classroom". The Urban Review. 3 (1): 16–20. doi:10.1007/BF02322211. ISSN   0042-0972. Wikidata   Q29544249.
  6. ↑ Rosenthal, Robert; Jacobson, Lenore (1992). Pygmalion in the classroom : teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development (Newly expanded ed.). Bancyfelin, Carmarthen, Wales: Crown House Pub. ISBN   978-1904424062.
  7. ↑ Oskar Pfungst (2010). "CHAPTER IV LABORATORY TESTS". Clever Hans (The Horse of Mr. von Osten). Translator: Carl L. Rahn – via Gutenberg.org.
  8. 1 2 Eden, Dov; Shani, Abraham B. (April 1982). "Pygmalion goes to boot camp: Expectancy, leadership, and trainee performance". Journal of Applied Psychology. 67 (2): 194–199. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.67.2.194.
  9. ↑ Yoder, Janice D.; Eden, Dov (January 1991). "Pygmalion in Management: Productivity as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy". The Academy of Management Review. 16 (1): 209. doi:10.2307/258615. JSTOR   258615.
  10. ↑ Bowers, David G.; Seashore, Stanley E. (1966). "Predicting Organizational Effectiveness With a Four-Factor Theory of Leadership". Administrative Science Quarterly. 11 (2): 238–263. doi:10.2307/2391247. JSTOR   2391247.
  11. 1 2 Eden, Dov; Ravid, Gad (1 December 1982). "Pygmalion versus self-expectancy: Effects of instructor- and self-expectancy on trainee performance". Organizational Behavior and Human Performance. 30 (3): 351–364. doi:10.1016/0030-5073(82)90225-2.
  12. 1 2 Thorndike, R.L. (1968). Reviewed work: Pygmalion in the classroom by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson. American Educational Research Journal, 5(4), 708–711.
  13. ↑ Raudenbush, Stephen W. (1984). "Magnitude of teacher expectancy effects on pupil IQ as a function of the credibility of expectancy induction: A synthesis of findings from 18 experiments". Journal of Educational Psychology. 76: 85–97. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.76.1.85.
  14. ↑ Spitz, Herman H (1999-09-01). "Beleaguered Pygmalion: A History of the Controversy Over Claims that Teacher Expectancy Raises Intelligence". Intelligence. 27 (3): 199–234. doi:10.1016/S0160-2896(99)00026-4. ISSN   0160-2896.
  15. ↑ Jenkins, Joseph R.; Deno, Stanley L. (1969). "Influence of student behavior on teacher's self-evaluation". Journal of Educational Psychology. 60 (6, Pt.1): 439–442. doi:10.1037/h0028495.
  16. ↑ Herrell, James M. (April 1971). "Galatea in the Classroom: Student Expectations Affect Teacher Behavior". Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (6(Pt. 2)): 521–522.
  17. 1 2 Good, Jere E. Brophy, Thomas L. (1974). Teacher-student relationships: causes and consequences. London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. pp. 276–277. ISBN   0-03-085749-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. 1 2 Bezuijen, Xander M.; van den Berg, Peter T.; van Dam, Karen; Thierry, Henk (2009). "Pygmalion and Employee Learning: The Role of Leader Behaviors". Journal of Management. 35 (5): 1248–1267. doi:10.1177/0149206308329966. S2CID   144639156.
  19. ↑ Learman, Lee A.; Avorn, Jerry; Everitt, Daniel E.; Rosenthal, Robert (July 1990). "Pygmalion in the Nursing Home The Effects of Caregiver Expectations on Patient Outcomes". Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 38 (7): 797–803. doi:10.1111/j.1532-5415.1990.tb01472.x. PMID   2196306. S2CID   43172693.
  20. ↑ Jenner, Hakan (14 September 1990). "The Pygmalion Effect". Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly. 7 (2): 127–133. doi:10.1300/J020V07N02_09.
  21. ↑ Sutton, Charlotte D.; Woodman, Richard W. (December 1989). "Pygmalion goes to work: The effects of supervisor expectations in a retail setting". Journal of Applied Psychology. 74 (6): 943–950. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.74.6.943.
  22. ↑ White, Susan S; Locke, Edwin A (1 September 2000). "Problems with the pygmalion effect and some proposed solutions". The Leadership Quarterly. 11 (3): 389–415. doi:10.1016/S1048-9843(00)00046-1.

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