JThe Pygmalion effect is a psychological principle that has relevance to effectively managing people. In this lesson, you will learn what the Pygmalion effect is, some key concepts behind it and review an examples that relates this concept to the workplace. A short quiz follows the lesson.
We also recommend watching The Pygmalion Effect: Influencing Employee Behavior and Groupthink: Definition & Examples
Definition
The Pygmalion effect is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy where if you think something will happen, you may unconsciously make it happen through your actions or inaction. It occurs in the workplace when a manager raises his or her expectations for the performance of workers and this actually results in an increase in worker performance.Key Concepts
Research has clearly established that employees have a greater level of success when their managers expect more of them. If you believe your employees are high producers and treat them as high producers, they tend to become high producers.This is because your belief in your employees tends to boost their self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a person's belief in his or her ability to perform the actions necessary for success.
The Pygmalion-at-work model suggests that having high expectations of your employees makes you behave towards them in a way that enhances their self-efficacy, which will motivate them to expend more effort, resulting in increased performance.
Managers must keep in mind that self-fulfilling prophecies can cut both ways. If you have low expectations for your employees, you may be inadvertently hurting their performance by negatively impacting their self-efficacy. This is known as the Golem effect.
The “Pygmalion effect,” also sometimes known as the “Rosenthal effect” for the psychologist credited with discovering it, is a theory teaching that people will act or behave in the way that others expect them to. It is very similar to the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The effect has both positive and negative outcomes — a person expected by his or her superiors to succeed will, but the opposite is also usually true. Most of the time, these expectations are not openly discussed. They are communicated passively through things like word choice or body language. The effect is most commonly discussed in terms of education and the workplace, but can also take hold in individuals.
Origins in Mythology and Literature
The effect and subsequent psychological teaching has its origins in Greek mythology. According to popular myth, Pygmalion was a prince of Cyprus and a sculptor who created and fell in love with an ivory statue of his ideal woman. He pleaded with the goddess Venus to give life to his creation, and she obliged. Pygmalion married the resulting woman and they had a perfect life together. He had expected the statue to be perfect in every way, and she fulfilled his expectations when she was brought to life.
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English playwright George Bernard Shaw expanded on this idea in his popular play Pygmalion, which served as the inspiration for the perhaps better known My Fair Lady. In these dramas, a genteel professor transforms a low-class, Cockney woman into a lady fit for society primarily by believing in her and expecting the best of her.
In Education
Many studies have been conducted on the Pygmalion effect in the classroom. Teachers who are given information that certain students are more likely to excel and achieve than other members of the class often find that those students do, in fact, perform better — even if they are not objectively advantaged. Even teachers who try not to convey their beliefs or expectations for certain students often find that those expectations, whatever they are, have influential power.
Many psychologists think that teachers do actually convey their expectations to their students, even if neither they nor the children ever actually realize it. Body language is just as important as verbal communication when conveying both positive and negative expectations, as is tone of voice. The use of body language is most commonly a subconscious form of communication, but it can prove to be very powerful. The response and interpretation of non-verbal signals is also often subconscious but tends to be long-lasting, especially when referring to one person's expectations of another.
In Business
The Pygmalion effect also has an important role in the working world. Managers, bosses, and corporate superiors can often influence the work and success of employees by expecting them to either rise or fall. The same as in school, these expectations never have to be conveyed explicitly in order to take root.
Self-Perception
The idea of self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to self-perception is also an important part of the concept. A person who believes he is worthless or has other negative perceptions about his abilities and qualities will usually fulfill his expectations. He will never achieve his true potential but will confine himself within his own self-imposed limitations. People who tend to have a positive self-image and believe they are capable of achieving anything they set out to achieve are usually more likely to do so.
Strategic Use
Psychologists often teach individual patients, teachers, and business leaders to strategically use the Pygmalion effect to encourage success and positive thinking. By forcing oneself to set high expectations for others, the theory goes, one can actually help drive achievement and success that might not have been achieved all on its own. This sort of strategy is related to concepts like positive thinking and positive visualization, but goes a step farther in that it is usually meant to actually manifest in relationships and interactions with others.
“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” (Rosenthal and Babad, 1985)
In terms of teaching, faculty who gripe about students establish a climate of failure, but faculty who value their students’ abilities create a climate of success. What kind of learning climate are you creating through your expectations?
The Pygmalion Effect
The work of Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968), among others, shows that teacher expectations influence student performance. Positive expectations influence performance positively, and negative expectations influence performance negatively. Rosenthal and Jacobson originally described the phenomenon as the Pygmalion Effect.“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.” (Rosenthal and Babad, 1985)
In terms of teaching, faculty who gripe about students establish a climate of failure, but faculty who value their students’ abilities create a climate of success. What kind of learning climate are you creating through your expectations?
Pygmalion in Tradition
Pygmalion in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book X) was a sculptor who fell in love with an ivory statue of his own making. Enamored by the beauty of his own making, Pygmalion begs the gods to give him a wife in the likeness of the statue. The gods grant the request, and the statue comes to life. George Bernard Shaw adopted Pygmalion for the title of his play about Professor Henry Higgins whose sense of self-efficacy is grandiose: “You see this creature with her curbstone English . . . in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party.”Pygmalion Research in the Classroom
The original research of Rosenthal and Jacobsen focused on an experiment at an elementary school where students took intelligence pre-tests. Rosenthal and Jacobsen then informed the teachers of the names of twenty percent of the students in the school who were showing “unusual potential for intellectual growth” and would bloom academically within the year. Unknown to the teachers, these students were selected randomly with no relation to the initial test. When Rosenthal and Jacobson tested the students eight months later, they discovered that the randomly selected students who teachers thought would bloom scored significantly higher. Rosenthal insists that the Pygmalion effect also applies to higher education: There've been experiments looking at college algebra classes at the Air Force Academy, a study of undergraduates in engineering; there've been lots of studies at the college level since the book came out confirming the findings . . . In fact, the original research conducted when I was at the University of North Dakota was all done with graduate students and under-graduates (Rhem, 1999). Why does the Pygmalion effect occur? “If you think your students can’t achieve very much, are not too bright, you may be inclined to teach simple stuff, do lots of drills, read from your notes, give simple assignments calling for simplistic answers” (Rhem, 1999).Pygmalion on the Department Level
Susan McLeod argues that the Pygmalion effect can infiltrate departments. She describes the potential impact on a composition writing program where the faculty have developed a culture of low expectations, “Departments and institutions develop their own cultures; the prevailing attitudes of teachers toward students tend to become organizational norms. If most teachers in the department have a low sense of efficacy and tacitly agree that certain groups of students (sometimes even all students) can’t learn to write, then newcomers are pressured to accept the same low sense of efficacy and accompanying low expectations” (McLeod, 1995).Practical tips:
- Never forecast failure in the classroom. If you know a test is particularly difficult, tell your students that the test is difficult but that you are sure that they will do well if they work hard to prepare.
- Do not participate in gripe sessions about students. Faculty members who gripe about students are establishing a culture of failure for their students, their department and their own teaching.
- Establish high expectations. Students achieve more when faculty have higher expectations. When you give students a difficult assignment, tell them, “I know you can do this.” If you genuinely believe that your students cannot perform the assignment, postpone the assignment and re-teach the material.
Sources:
- McLeod, Susan. “Pygmalion or Golem? Teacher Affect and Efficacy.” College Composition and Communication 46 (3): 369-386.
- Rhem, James. “Pygmalion in the classroom” NTLF 8 (2): 1-4.
- Rosenthal, R, and L. Jacobsen. Pygmalion in the classroom: teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
- Rosenthal, R., and E. Y. Babad. 1985. Pygmalion in the gymnasium. Educational Leadership 43 (1): 36–39.
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