We were all brought up with certain parents and authority figures early in our lives. In our educational life, we continued to be shaped by our teachers and the education system. Some of us are understanding, open-minded and supportive; some of us have had authoritarian, oppressive, and traditional parents, teachers, or administrators.
Individuals raised by supportive and positive idols grow up to be more self-confident. Individuals raised by controlling parents turn into people who are constantly trying to prove themselves because they are not accepted by their parents. We often exhibit more positive behavior towards the expectations of supportive individuals. In the face of excessive expectation, we can feel under a lot of pressure and stress. Today, we will explain what the Expectation Effect is, which has an important place in psychology and sociology, and talk about experimental studies on the Expectation Effect, the Depygmalion Effect, and where the name Pygmalion comes from.
Self-fulfilling prophecy, invisible magic: The Anticipation Effect
The first scientist to study the Expectation Effect was sociologist Prof. Robert Merton calls this effect “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Merton, The Expectation Effect; He defines it as “Misdefining a situation leads to a new behavior that makes wrong right”.
According to Merton, the Expectation Effect, which is defined in this way; It is explained as the behavior of a person after a while that corresponds to the expectations of others (especially those whom he considers superior to himself in any way).
A love story that transforms an ivory statue into a warm heart: Pygmalion
Pygmalion, a Cypriot king and sculptor, decided that there was no woman worthy of his love on earth, and decided to make a woman statue that was close to his perfection. Falling in love with the statue of a woman he had carved from ivory, Pygmalion thinks that no woman on earth can be like him. She believes that the statue she named Galatea is the love of her life.
Pygmalion begs Aphrodite, the goddess of love of the period, to transform the statue of the woman he fell in love with into a human. Aphrodite, on the other hand, revives the statue in the face of this plea. With this event, Pygmalion and Galatea have a happy love. The name Pygmalion, also known as the Anticipation Effect, comes from this story. According to the Pygmalion Effect, the probability of what is expected is always high.
The expectations we present to the other party can guide them.
After the sociologist Merton’s studies on Africans living in America in 1948; In 1963, Harvard University professors, psychologists Rosenthal and Kermit Fode, were experimenting with university students and mice to prove this effect.
Students are divided into two groups, the first group is told that the mice given to them are intelligent mice with superior abilities. Students in the second group are informed that the mice given to them are genetically disadvantaged. In fact, mice are randomly selected and assigned to groups.
Students experimenting with mice unwittingly reveal the importance of the expectation effect.
The students in the first group were more understanding and compassionate towards the mice than the students in the second group. In the maze walking experiment, it was observed that the mice in the first group performed better than the mice in the other group. It was determined that some mice in the second group did not move even one step away from the starting line. As a result, Rosenthal defined the Expectation Effect as “a phenomenon where one person’s expectation of another person’s behavior begins to evolve into a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Have you ever wondered why our teachers show that the class cares more about their hardworking students?
Do you remember how your teachers treated the hardest working person in the class, or the colorful award ribbons hung on our top performers? Or are you the most hardworking of the class and the favorite of every environment?
The most interesting work in sociology and psychology is Prof. It belongs to Robert Rosenthal and a school principal, Lenore Jacobson. This experiment, involving 18 teachers and 650 children, is also called the Rosenthal Experiment in the literature. This joint study of Rosenthal and Jacobson’s observed behavior in students is known as the “Pygmalion Experiment in the Classroom”.
The Pygmalion Experiment in the classroom, “Is believing half the battle” really?
In this experiment, students were given a general aptitude test. A mixed list of students from all levels with normal test results was prepared and the teachers were informed that the students on this list were gifted. At the end of the semester, the same test was applied to the same students again. This time, the test results of ordinary students who were said to have passed the first test came out at a higher level.
Teachers unwittingly displayed more positive, calm, and more encouraging behaviors towards students who were said to be gifted. They conveyed these positive expectations to them with a moderate style, tone of voice, facial expressions and similar channels. Students who could not observe a change in their achievement level were probably ignored.
In fact, the point emphasized in the “Pygmalion Experiment in the Classroom” is not so foreign to us.
Does this sound familiar to you, too? Do you remember those crowded classrooms where the hardworking golden boys who were believed to be able to achieve anything and the lazy students who were believed to be unable to achieve anything were left to fade even more on the benches by the walls?
If we are to sum up; According to Rosenthal and Jacobson, these different results in the test are all due to the expectations created in the minds of the teachers. The prophecy “If you show a child that you believe he will be successful, the probability of the child’s success will increase” emerges and the expectation effect is realized in this way.
The Pygmalion Experiment in the Classroom is like a fragment of how different expectations such as this can have an impact on our behaviors, not only in our education life, but throughout our lives.
Expectations affect us in business life as well as in school.
After the “Pygmalion Experiment in the Classroom”, which proved that it seriously affects performance, the Pygmalion Effect is also tested in organizational communities and studies are started by Livingston in 1969 to put it into the literature.
Just as; It is similar to the fact that the expectations of the leaders in the organizational order affect the performances of the group members, just as the expectations of the teachers affect the success and performance of the students. In professional life, we can conclude that the attitude of the managers towards their employees affects the performance of the employees.
“Nobody loves you, you can’t do anything!”: Golem Effect
Take someone who feels they are not respected and loved enough at work. In fact, although such a situation does not exist, the person makes negative inferences about himself even in the slightest behavior of his colleagues. This thought is reflected in his motivation in business life. He interrupts his work and naturally his success decreases. The respect that his managers and co-workers have for him is dwindling. Over time, the person who displays a sensitive attitude towards every action of the people around him starts to act like someone he thinks he is, thinking that everyone approaches him with negative feelings and that no one loves him.
With this insecure energy and impulsive approaches, he makes his own negative thoughts real. In a way, it’s in his head. The thought (i.e. prophecy) of the person in question becomes self-fulfilling. When we look at this theory, although it is an example of the Expectation Effect, it is a negative example in practice. This phenomenon is called Depygmalion in the literature, also known as the Golem Effect.
The Expectation Effect shapes our lives.
We can see this in human relations in all areas of our lives, as in the example of an employee who believes he is not loved. A person who believes that he will never be loved is not likely to be loved without getting rid of these unfounded thoughts. Sometimes we are the ones who have endless expectations from the people in front of us. As a result; This process comes into play when we develop expectations for the people around us about how they should behave and behave towards us. Now that we have learned that we can influence each other so strongly, maybe we can try to be more understanding and to have more reasonable expectations by remembering that others are also human.
As Henry Ford said: “Keep thinking what you’re thinking. Failure, success… you will get whatever it is.”
In this article, we talked about the Pygmalion Effect. What about your experiences that can be an example of this effect? If you want your sample experiences and such content to come, do not hesitate to express your opinions in the comments.
Source: Forbes, Research Gate, Dergipark
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