Understanding Society
Further Research on the Pygmalion Effect
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
How well did the Pygmalion Effect survive later scrutiny? Doug turns from Robert Rosenthal’s original experiment to Lee Jussim and Kent Harber’s 2005 review, which found that teacher expectations can influence students, though usually less dramatically than first claimed. Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History then broadens the setting to workplaces, armies, and hospitals — and Dov Eden’s complaint that valuable science remains ‘underapplied.’
A Note on the Original Text
Doug’s writings are presented as originally written. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical irregularities have been retained to preserve his words and the integrity of the original record.
ORIGINAL WRITING
The content in this post is based on the book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
“Fifty years on the Pygmalion Effect remains an important finding in psychological research. It’s been tested by hundreds of tests in the army, at universities, in courtrooms, in families, in nursing homes and within organizations. True, the effect isn’t always as strong as Rosenthal originally thought, especially when it comes to how children perform on intelligence tests. Nonetheless, a critical review study in 2005 concluded that ‘the abundant naturalistic and experimental evidence shows that teacher expectations clearly do influence students—at least sometimes. High expectations can be a powerful tool. When wielded by managers, employees perform better. When wielded by officers, soldiers fight harder. When wielded by nurses, patients recover faster.
Despite this, Rosenthal’s discovery didn’t spark the revolution he and his team had hoped for. ‘The Pygmalion is great science that is undersupplied,’ an Israeli psychologist lamented. ‘It hasn’t made the difference it should have in the world, and that’s very disappointing.