The Pygmalion Effect

Definition and Background

What is the Pygmalion Effect?

Related Articles Self Fulfilling Prophecy The Rosenthal Effect

People tend to live up to what's expected of them and they tend to do better when treated as if they are capable of success. These are the lessons of The Pygmalion Effect. Pygmalion first appeared in Greek mythology as a king of Cyprus who carved and then fell in love with a statue of a woman, which Aphrodite brought to life as Galatea.

Much later, George Barnard Shaw wrote a play, entitiled Pygmalion, about Henry Higgins (the gentleman) and Lisa Doolittle (the cockney flower girl whom Henry turns bets he can turn into a lady).

So the Pygmalion Effect has come to mean "you get what you expect." If you expect disaster, your expectations may well be met in a kind of "self-fulfilling prophecy," yet another catch phrase about the pressure of expectations.

Additional Resources

Case Studies

In another classic experiment, Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson worked with elementary school children from 18 classrooms. They randomly chose 20% of the children from each room and told the teachers they were "intellectual bloomers."  I first learned of this story from Zig Ziglar, a reknown motivational speaker and positive thinking proponent.  

He goes into detail about how a set of school teachers were told that their students were geniuses.  They've been tested by some new methodology of determining the success of school age children, and THESE kids were the best of the best.  In addition, these teachers were told that they were uniquely entrusted with these children's welfare for the coming school year. They explained that these children should show remarkable gains during the year.

The children, performed admirably, gaining an average of two IQ points in verbal ability, seven points in reasoning and four points in over all IQ.  At the conclusion of the experiment, the teachers were informed that these students were randomly assigned, much as any others are during any normal school year.  And the teachers as well, prior to this year, were nothing special -- they, too, were selected randomnly.

The key difference between this effect and the Hawthorne Effect is that the participants were not necessarily aware that they were being monitored and that this was an experiment of any kind.

Conclusion

In organizations, the culture can be a positive or negative influence on project teams. Successful projects are a mystery to many managers and as such, projects are frequently seen as chaotic and unmanageable.  Oddly enough, they become so through intense application of sheer will.  Other managers do not know failure, and simply cannot make the choices that lead their projects in that direction.

This article is here to serve as a reference for those reading my Halo Effect article, wherein this concept is referenced.

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