The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area. 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. Rosenthal and Jacobson held that high expectations lead to better performance and low expectations lead to worse performance, both effects being examples of self-fulfilling prophecy. 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.
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. 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. 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.
Mediator - leadership behavior Leadership was identified by Eden and Shani as a mediator of the Pygmalion effect. 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, instructors were rated more positively on each of the four management leadership dimensions by Bowers and Seashore. 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, 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. 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.
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