Pygmalion Effect

The Pygmalion Effect in the Classroom

Rosenthal and Jacobson’s 1968 study of the Pygmalion effect looked at the effects of teacher expectations on students’ academic performance. In this study, also known as the Oak School experiment, Rosenthal and Jacobson gave IQ tests [Page 1333]to students in a California elementary school. They then told teachers they were administering the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition and provided teachers with the names of their students who had scored in the top 20%. The teachers were told that these students were expected to bloom academically that year when, in actuality, the names provided to the teachers were randomly selected. After taking the IQ test once more at the end of the school year, the “bloomers” confirmed their teachers’ expectations by showing increased IQ score than control students. Teachers also rated the experimental group of “bloomers” as more interesting, curious, appealing, and well-adjusted than the control group at the end of the year.

Although Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study met with criticism, the Pygmalion effect has been supported by numerous replication studies and meta-analyses and has been tested across a variety of contexts. Studies of undergraduate and graduate students have shown the Pygmalion effect to persist beyond elementary school to higher education. The influence of teacher expectations on student academic performance is stronger for younger students, however, because they have yet to establish fixed conceptions of their academic abilities.

The Pygmalion effect can extend from individual teachers to entire academic departments as well when dominant teacher attitudes and expectations spread within these larger contexts. The effect can also work in a reverse direction, where teachers’ performance is influenced by the expectations of their students. For example, studies have shown that teachers perform better when provided with positive student nonverbal behavior, such as student attentiveness, compared to negative nonverbal behavior.

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