Understanding Society
The Pygmalion Effect
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Ordinary rats performed differently after students were told that one cage held bright animals and the other dull ones. Doug follows Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History as psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson carry that question into Spruce Elementary School. Randomly labeled ‘high-potential’ children received warmer treatment and improved, giving the Pygmalion Effect its name and central image: expectation bringing possibility to life.
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.
The Psychologist Bob Rosenthal ran an experiment in which he had two rat cages. One cage had a sign identifying the rats as being specially trained intelligent specimens, and the other cage identified its rats as being dull and dimwitted. Later that day Rosenthal instructed his students to put the rats in a maze and record how long it takes each one to find the way out. What he doesn’t tell his students is that in fact none of the animals is special in any way—they’re all just ordinary lab rats.
But then something peculiar happened. The rats that the students believe to be brighter and faster really do perform better. It’s like magic. The ‘bright’ rats, though no different than their ‘dull’ counterparts, perform twice as well. Rosenthal came to realize that his students handled the ‘bright’ rats—the ones for which they had higher expectations more warmly and gently. This treatment changed the rats’ behavior and enhanced their performance.
The obvious question was, could a similar effect be found for the school children. At Spruce Elementary school, a test was administered to the students to see who would make the greatest strides during the school year. This was a common IQ test and Rosenthal and his staff cast them all aside. They tossed a coin to decide which students they would tell the teachers were ‘high-potential.’ The students were told nothing at all.
The power of expectation swiftly began to show its magic. Teachers gave these students more attention, more encouragement, and more praise, thus also changing how the students thought of themselves. The effect was clearest among the youngest students, whose IQ scores increased by an average of 27 points in a single year. The largest gains among the students were the Latino males, a group which typically had the lowest expectations.
Rosenthal dubbed this discovery the Pygmalion Effect, after the mythological sculptor who fell so hard for one of his own creations that the gods decided to bring the sculpture to life! The author notes that this Pygmalion Effect resembles the placebo effect, except, instead of benefitting oneself, these are expectations that benefit others.