The popular musical from the 1960’s ‘My Fair Lady’ is based on the 1912 play “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw. It tells the story of a Professor of Phonetics Henry Higgins and his bet that he could train Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, so that she might pass as a well born lady, presentable in high society.
Pygmalion is a figure of legend from Cyprus who appears in Greek mythology as a man who falls in love with a statue that he created to such a degree that it came alive and loved him back.
‘The Pygmalion Effect’ is based on the research work of Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson ‘Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development’. (1968) In the experiment, all the students in a class were given a standard IQ test. After the results were scored, the researchers informed the teachers that many students in the class had unusually high IQ scores and would probably fare much better than their classmates during the remainder of the year. In reality, the children were picked at random. By the end of the year, all the children had gained in IQ, but the learners who had been identified as stronger had done much better than other students. Evidently, the teachers treated them differently after being told to expect sudden improvement.
As a result, teachers expectations play a major part in the success or failure of their learners. When teachers expect good performance from their learners, the learners do in fact show better results. Conversely, when teachers have a negative bias this has a clear knock-on-effect and shows up as poor performance.
Over the years Rosenthal and Jacobson added to their studies and found that teachers acted more warmly toward students they expected to do well. Furthermore, they gave the learners they perceived as stronger more difficult material to study. These learners were also given more opportunities to respond in class, more time to answer questions and there were distinct differences in the quality of the feedback they received.
‘The Pygmalion Effect’ has been documented in other contexts such as in business management, in courtrooms and in nursing homes. In all cases, the expectations tend to come true, whether they are based on any objective evidence or not.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.”
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
George Bernard Shaw
