November 24, 2005
What is in name Pygmalion...
Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during 43 BC and wrote on topic of love, abandoned woman, and mythological transformations. The story of Pygmalion in Ovid’s Metamorphosis inspired many writers and artists through out the centuries. George Bernard Shaw named one of his play “Pygmalion” after Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Pygmalion is a sculptor who doesn’t have interest in women. However, he is rewarded by his “hatred” of women when he is granted his wish by the gods. He falls in love with the sculpture that he makes out of ivory, a figure of a woman. Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty realizes Pygmalion’s love for Galatea and transforms her into a real woman.
The romantic myth of Pygmalion and Galatea had affected minds of artists and their works such as George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”. A similar idea of romance and love take place in the play when the character Henry Higgins, a rich and educated man tries to create that ideal woman out of an uneducated, wild, and vulgar woman Eliza. Ideally speaking both Ovid’s Pygmalion and Shaw’s Henry Higgins are keen sculptors and creators of the women they love.
Lastly, I think that both Shaw and Ovid illustrate the historical idea of supreme power of males over females. In other words, with the helps from Pygmalion and Higgins the females are able to find their true and “improved” faces/identities and even come to life as Galatea. Their works show the state of interdependentce of men and women and most stories have endings like this and this is the “happily ever after” finale. As if Elize and Higgins it is true because Eliza still takes care of the bachelors and has desire for Higgins even though she knows that it will never be that way.
Posted by lcisbold at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2005
What is the "Pygmalion Effect"?
What Is the “Pygmalion Effect?”
The “Pygmalion Effect” is basically how a person can successfully fulfill an expectation that they may have for themselves or that someone else has for them. It also concentrates on the fact that people mostly give away their expectations through body language, so that someone else has a hint of someone else's expectations.
An example of the “Pygmalion Effect” is shown by a study conducted by Jacobson and Rosenthal in 1968 where children from ages six to twelve years old, all taken from the same school, were told to take an IQ test, which was given to them by the experimenters. The children were assigned to the control or experimental group. The teachers were told that the children in the experimental group were the "high achievers", and when they found this out there was a significant increase in the children’s IQ gains in the group over the course of a year. This occurred even though the allocation was a random one. This experiment shows the fulfillment of prior expectations.
The “Pygmalion Effect” can also be applied to the workforce. It can be important for leaders or managers, because the performance of a group or a team or employees depends on how they are lead. It directly related to the performance of the person in charge. According to Goethe "treat a man as he is he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be." This is a principle that anyone in a leadership position can follow to develop a proactive and successful team.
There is even a program that focuses on the “Pygmalion Effect” in order to develop successful business people. It is successful in helping people improve their overall morale and productivity when it comes to work. This program is conducted through videos, real-life examples, and scenes from the "Pygmalion" movie where people are transformed because of either positive or negative expectations of each other. This type of learning program has been used by occupational trainers for over twenty years, and has been the result of many success stories. People can now use this method to their advantage.
--Yasmin
Sources http://www.accel-team.com/pygmalion/ http://www.psybox.com/web_dictionary/pygm.htm http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Pygmalion-Effect&id=86460 http://www.crmlearning.com/pygmalion-effect-the-power-of-expectations-program
Posted by lcisperez at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)
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 04:36 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2005
The Pygmalion Effect
The Pygmalion Effect is a phenomenon in which one's expectations of another person actually cause that person to act in ways that conform to the expectations. It basically suggests that if a person holds a certain view towards another person, then that person is likely to live up to that view. The idea comes from an Ancient Greek myth, in which a man idolized a statue of a woman so much that a goddess agreed to turn the statue into an actual person, and the man and the newly formed woman fell in love. However, this idea can be seen in modern entertainment as it is the underlying plot in many movies, including "My Fair Lady," of course, "She's All That," and "Pretty Woman."
The Pygmalion Effect is not just explored in film, it has been studied in various places, such as the work place and in schools, to see if it really has a significant effect on performance. In 1966, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson did a study on teacher expectations in which they administers I.Q. tests to students at the beginning of a school year. Before the teachers received the results on these tests, they randomnly selected certain students to be labelled as academic acheivers, and other to be labeled as academically challenged.
At the end of the year when they administered the I.Q. test once again they found that each student's score correlated to his or her label. For example, students labelled as academic acheivers scored higher, while students labelled as challenged scored lower. Rosenthal and Jacobson concluded that a teacher's expectations of his or her students could affect the students' ability to excel. This finding gained a lot attention because it suggested the possibility that the wrong teacher could inhibit a student's learning.
This Pygmalion Effect is similar to the idea in pychology known as the self-fulfilling prophecy. This theory states that an individual usually acts to fulfill an expectation held about him or her, ultimately making this expectation reality. Psychologists believe that the self-fulfilling prophecy has more to do with self-image and determination, therefore suggesting that students who scored high on the test did so because they were confident in themselves.
The Pygmalion Effect seems like a reasonable theory, especially in the classroom. It seems feasable that when a teacher believes in his or her students, the students believe in themselves, and as a result they perform better. Films that suggest that this theory extends into real world experiences, are somewhat ungrounded in that there is no research done to prove this correct.
http://www.users.muohio.edu/shermalw/edp603_group2-f00.html"
I believe that the source from which I got this information is credible because it is an essay written for a college course. The authors, date, and professor for which it was written are all included. At the end of the paper there is a rather long list of references cited. Also, the fact that the URL is muohio.edu is an indicator that it is a credible site.
Posted by lcissullivan at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)