Pygmalion effect

I think that's one of the most important discoveries in psychological science in the last 50 years.

There was this very famous study called the Pygmalion Effect, and it was run by a Harvard professor named Bob Rosenthal.

And he randomly assigned children in elementary school to two conditions.

Some children were just gonna go through elementary school the way they go through elementary school.

Your expectations, their expectations.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy known as the Pygmalion Effect.

Nothing to do with pigs, but we're going to talk about that.

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This one's known as the Pygmalion effect.

Basically, when you have high expectations about yourself, about your presentation, about other people, about their willingness to buy, it actually lifts the person's performance.

If you expect yourself to do poorly... chances are you're going to do poorly.

This is called in the scientific realm, the Pygmalion effect, which is a notion that the greater the expectation, the greater their performance.

I like to call it the science of self-fulfilling prophecies, to the extent there is such a thing.

And one of the things that we had been looking at is this video that explores what this sort of phenomenon looks like in the classroom.

Just so you know, Ms. Laree believes that everyone has genius.

But if an educator or someone in a position of authority believes that the person subordinate to them is dumb, you're not gonna spend that much time with them because you don't think it's a worthwhile investment of your time.

And when it comes to this in the classroom, the article that we were using to accompany this conversation, which was called The Pygmalion Effect in the Classroom, and it was produced by Class Teaching, which is a blog that follows this topic, they said, quote, the input factor is relatively simple.

Educators, and this is a blog that's talking to educators, so they're keeping that education conversation and language in place.

the different things that the teachers did that helped to shift the outcomes in the classroom.

Now, the first factor that is identified, and this experiment is called the Pygmalion effect.

For those of you who watched My Fair Lady or Trading Places, you've kind of seen a popular culture depiction of this.

But there are four factors that the researchers were able to trace that contributed to the teachers having a different expectation, which resulted in the student rising to that expectation.

They did not for whatever reason.

We don't know who these teachers are, but they shifted the environment for the students for whom a different level of expectations had been set.

And according to a number of articles that have talked about this and the one we're looking at today is called the Pygmalion Effect.

And it's in class teaching.

This was one of my favorite workshop series ever.

because it speaks to the power of expectations in the classroom and the very simple things that can shift them and the lessons that we can learn from examining what happens when a school was subjected to a series of questions or an experiment, if you will, about the Pygmalion effect.

Now, the Pygmalion effect is basically, if any of you have seen Trading Places, you've seen this in real life.

If any of you have seen My Fair Lady, you've seen this in real life.

But basically, the Pygmalion effect is one that says the greater the expectations placed upon a classroom or a spouse or friendships, whatever, the greater the performance.

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Those kids began to think of themselves differently, and in the end, they actually performed significantly better than the other kids.

And, you know, sometimes we can engage in self-fulfilling prophecies.

I don't know if you're familiar with the idea of Pygmalion effect or Pygmalion leadership.

So sometimes when we have an expectation of someone, they will rise to that expectation.

And there's copious amounts of studies that show that and demonstrate when we have a certain expectation of either a child performing in our classroom or a person leaving us, they are going to rise to that expectation and not exceed it necessarily.

That is how other people believe in you.

And we touched upon this briefly before, like, what does a teacher say to you? Do they believe that you can do it? Are they encouraging you or your parents? And this is kind of coined as the Pygmalion effect, which is from Greek mythology, which is fun, because I do really like Greek mythology.

But Pygmalion was a sculptor from Cyprus.

And he carved an ivory statue of a woman and he treated it as a real woman.

So he really fell in love with his statue.

And He gave her clothes, he bathed her, he had a full-on relationship with the statue and Aphrodite was so moved by his love, by his devotion to the statue that she turned it into a real woman, into Galatea.

So that's the myth, but then this sociological effect, the Pygmalion effect kind of relates to or presents the idea of that if you believe something enough about yourself or if other people believe something enough, then it might become reality.

So it really shows that how teachers and parents and people in your environment, what they say about you to you really influences your own self-belief.

You need a teacher just the way that John Wooden's players needed him.

One of the things a great mentor and/or teacher does for you, and this is from chapter eight, The Pygmalion Effect, is self-confidence can sometimes be borrowed initially because somebody else that you respect and/or admire believes in you.

And so that's why it's good to have a John Wooden or others who are mentors, coaches.

And then if we find ourselves in the position of being the mentor and/or teacher, and we see something in somebody that we tell them, right? It's so powerful, like we can use our power for good to create belief in somebody else.

You know, that's only because I had this belief in myself that came from Mr. Carr.

Mm.

The research you mentioned, the Pygmalion effect, I think is a, almost like a parable for this.

So there was a, a Harvard researcher, Bob Rosenthal, who also had this personal observation that so much of our self-confidence comes from other people.