Today’s story in a small way involves one of my favourite movies the Audrey Hepburn & Rex Harrison Classic – ‘My Fair Lady’. Based on George Bernard Shaw’s classic ‘Pygmalion’, the movie mesmerizes us about possibilities as Professor Higgins demonstrates that anybody can be coached and guided to achieve almost anything. He trains a poor Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to fool the English Aristocracy into believing that she is from a Royal family. This story is about something called the Pygmalion Effect. A phenomenon whereby others’ expectations of a target person affects the target person’s performance. It is also called the Rosenthal effect based on a study conducted among school children and teachers in the 1968 by two researchers from the Harvard University Medical School – Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson. In an elementary school in California, Rosenthal and his colleagues made all the 1st and 2nd graders to go through a basic IQ test. However, they told the teachers that this was a test to check academic blooming called the Harvard test of Inflected Acquisition. Post the test they randomly choose a handful of students’ names in each class, labelled them bloomers and shared the names with the teachers. These were supposedly children who would become smarter in the academic year ahead. The children didn’t know in any direct way that the teachers were holding certain expectations from them. The teachers were instructed not to share this information with those students. When Rosenthal and Jacobson returned at the end of the academic year and tested the children, they found that the children who had been alleged to the teacher that would show intellectual gain actual showed significantly higher intellectual gain then the rest. So, the kids actually got smarter when they were expected to get smarter by their teachers. This is what is called the Rosenthal Effect or the Pygmalion effect. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. When we have low expectation from someone our behaviour ensures that that too is self-fulfilling. They perform badly. This is called the Golem effect. The Pygmalion and Golem effect are not unique to academics. It has been since tested in almost every field and every occupation and has been proven to be true. In 1982, Dov Eden a psychologist working at the Tel Aviv University did an experiment during the 15 week rigorous training session the Isreali Secret Service Commando’s go through. It is one of the most rigorous and intense commando trainings anywhere in the world. 16 hour workdays which are both physically demanding and mentally exhausting. Before this particular batch of 105 SS Trainees started their bootcamp, Eden and his colleague briefed the training officers that the army had accumulated a wealth of data about the trainees including psychological tests, sociometric data and rating by previous commanders. Based on this, each of these 105 soldiers were assigned a score and that classified them into three “command potentials” – high, regular and unknown. The soldiers were put into four groups with different instructors and the three categories of soldiers – high, regular and unknown where equally divided into the four groups. While the instructors were given these classifications that soldiers were not informed about them. When Dov Eden and his colleague returned after 15 weeks they discovered something remarkable. Like all previous batches this batch of 105 SS trainees were given a written exam at the end of their training. A written exam covering their new knowledge of combat tactics, topography understanding, SOPs, Tests of practical skills like navigation and accuracy of weapon firing. What did they see? The Pygmalion effect was very much in existence even here. Even here the soldiers who were classified, without their knowledge, as high command potential did significantly better than the rest. But unfortunately, the reverse was also true. Those that were classified as regular actually did worse than not just the ones labelled high but also worse than those labelled unknown – the phenomenon called the Golem effect. So what are the Pygmalion and golem effects you are having around you – in your teams and in your home? Eye opening experiments! Don’t you agree? Where in business can you use these stories of the experiment in a school by Rosenthal and in a commando bootcamp by Eden? Business Points ( Tags ) #storytelling #business #bestseller #stories #RosenthalEffect #pygmalioneffect #Self-Fulfillingprophecy #GolemEffect positive reinforcement, negative reinforce
