Pygmalion Syndrome - The Effect

According to the myth, Pygmalion created a female statue and treated it with such affection that, through Aphrodite's intervention, the statue came to life and responded to him. Such is the essence of the self-fulfilling prophecy: what we expect tends to come true. In a famous report (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), Rosenthal describes a case in which a researcher told teachers that a testing program had identified some students as having high potential and others as having low potential. In fact, students had been picked randomly and assigned to one of the two groups. The results after a year in school: the so-called high potential group showed significant gains in achievement and ability as measured by standardized tests.

Rosenthal's initial report has been followed by twenty years of research exploring the limits of the self-fulfilling prophecy. The thinking today is that, while we can't think a statue into coming alive, we can certainly influence our level of performance and that of others by the level of our expectations.