The Power Of Expectations: The Pygmalion Effect
The Pygmalion effect was first established in 1965, when a Harvard psychologist named Robert Rosenthal approached the headmaster of an elementary school in order to administer a special IQ test to the school’s students. He got approval, and shortly thereafter reported that approximately 20% of the students were going to ‘bloom’ academically in the following year. Unsurprisingly, these designated students excelled when tested again almost a year later.
But here comes the twist. The IQ test Rosenthal used was nothing special, instead, it was just a standard IQ test. Not only that, but that 20% percent was chosen completely at random. It turns out that it was the teacher’s expectations that resulted in this difference, which is exactly what this experiment was trying to prove.
This experiment, named the “Oak School Experiment”, and the academic paper that came out of it, have become one of the most cited and discussed psychological studies ever conducted. The discovered effect has become one of the most prominent concepts in psychology and management, and it has been named “The Pygmalion Effect” ever since.
I use EVERY piece of content in English that I like as an exercise. Here is the exercise that I did with this text, and you can do too:
- Condense the meaning of the passage in 1-2 sentences
- Tell your story: do you agree or disagree with this? Have you experienced it in your own life?
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