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November 21, 2005
Pygmalion Effect
“The Pygmalion effect (also known as Rosenthal effect) is a finding that people tend to behave as you expect they will” (“Pygmalion effect”).
Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson conducted experiments concerning children in schools. They used psychology in order to trick the teachers into working a small percentage of students to their full potential. Twenty percent of the students were selected and the teachers were told that these students showed great intellectual potential. By the end of eight months, these students possessed a higher IQ that the other children who were not singled out. This indicates that the teachers must have given these students more attention, knowing that they could be mentally advanced. One educational reformed concluded that “labeling matters, and the younger the person getting the label is, the more it matters”. In addition, James Rhem said something interesting : “when teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not so encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways”. Essentially, he is suggesting that, if teachers do not have high standards for learning, neither will their students, so ultimately, a student’s performance is governed by their teacher. This occurs in everyday life too; in the workforce or at home. If my parents have high expectations for me, I will have high expectations for myself and therefore will continue to push and work myself harder.
The Pygmalion Effect also seems to have to deal with a person’s body image and view of him or herself. Like in My Fair Lady, Eliza only becomes of high status when she looks the part (clothes, hair, makeup), and acts the part (speech, manners, poise). Only then is she considered an upstanding citizen of society.
I used www.wikipedia.org for my research. When I went to do my blog, this source was already used, but as I searched around online for another credible site, there were mostly dot com sources that did not look credible because of advertisements. Wikipedia is a credible source because it is a dot org, meaning, it has to do with an organization, and for most of my research papers, teachers have listed Wikipedia as an informative and good source of information.
-Christina
Posted by lcisgancarz at November 21, 2005 04:36 PM