We are All Pygmalions

In Greek mythology, Pygmalion, the King of Cyprus, fell in love with the statue of a beautiful woman.

He prayed to the goddess, Aphrodite, for a wife just like his statue, whereupon the goddess transformed the statue into a real woman whom Pygmalion then married.

In 1912, George Bernard Shaw wrote a play called Pygmalion, about a speech professor who transformed a Cockney girl into a "lady."

Her origins were never suspected and she was accepted into English society. This became Shaw's most successful work and later was the basis for the 1964 film, My Fair Lady.

Evidently there is something captivating about this theme, because in 1968 a book called Pygmalion in the Classroom was published, in which the authors described an experiment showing that teachers' expectations have a strong effect on the performance of their students.

In the study, all students at an elementary school were given an intelligence test. Then 20 percent of the students were chosen at random, without respect to their grades on the test. These students were reported to their teachers as showing "unusual potential for intellectual growth," and about to "bloom" in academic performance.

At the end of the school year, all students were again tested. Those who had been labeled as "intelligent" showed significantly better performance on the second test than the rest of the children. In the authors' words, "the change in the teachers' expectations...had led to an actual change in the intellectual performance of these randomly selected children."

The study met with a great deal of disbelief, especially among teachers, but the experiment was repeated many times with similar results. Later studies done with college students — and then even with rodents — showed the same effect.

In the animal experiment, a group of psychology students were given rats to train in running mazes. Half of the students were told that their rats were genetically "maze-bright" and could learn to run a maze quickly, while the other half were told that their rats were "maze-dull." Actually, all of the rats were quite ordinary, neither bright nor dull. However, those rats believed by the students to be unusually bright learned to run the maze significantly faster than the rats believed to be dull.

All of this research should erase any doubt that our expectations of others, even when not openly communicated, have definite and measurable effects on those others.

So what does this have to do with you and me? The power of belief is very great. And this can work for harm as well as for good. So, if you are exasperated by the behavior or performance of someone near to you, be aware that you could be a part of the problem.

It's important to bear in mind also, that this is true for that person who is nearest to you of all — yourself! If you think you are limited, you are. There are no limitations except those we impose on ourselves through beliefs we may not realize we hold, and expectations so deeply hidden we may not suspect their presence.

TOOLS FOR CREATIVE LIVING

There is an antidote to limiting expectations, according to J. Allen Boone, author of KINSHIP WITH ALL LIFE, who wrote, "The most effective way to achieve right relations with any living thing is to look for the best in it and then help that best into the fullest expression."

References:

Carreira, J., Carvalho, S. and Silva, J.G. "The Pygmalion Effect in Experimental Dependability Evaluation," Department of Computer Science, University of Coimbra, Portugal.

Rosenthal, R., and Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. [I'm not sure HOLT was in the name during the ‘60s. . . Better check!]

Sisson, G. "Self-fulfilling Prophecies in the Classroom" (2003). PsychNET (American Psychological Association).

By Cora Scott