The Pygmalion Effect

In 1968, the psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson published the results of a study at an elementary school in California. At the beginning of the school year, all the students took a test. The teachers were then told that, according to the test, certain students were about to make unusually rapid progress. In reality, those students had been chosen at random.

At the end of the year, the students were tested again. [A] The students who had been described as fast learners showed greater improvement than their classmates, especially in the first and second grades. [B] Rosenthal and Jacobson concluded that the teachers' expectations had influenced the students' performance. [C] The teachers had not been told to treat these students differently, but they may have given them more attention, encouragement, and challenging work. [D] The researchers named this the Pygmalion effect, after a character in an ancient Greek myth whose statue comes to life.

Later researchers have questioned how strong the effect really is. Some argued that the original study had serious flaws, and many attempts to repeat it found smaller effects. Still, most psychologists agree that teachers' expectations can affect students to some degree, especially when teachers know little else about them.