Pygmalion effect

The Pygmalion effect, named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion and his statue, is expressed by saying:

People tend to behave as you expect they will.

A literary illustration of the concept is present in the George Bernard Shaw play, Pygmalion, later popularized by the musical My Fair Lady. The character Henry Higgins believes the cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle can be made into a lady. Higgins' belief in her drives her to make it.

In a study by two Psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968), published in their book Pygmalion in the Classroom, the experimenters told teachers that twenty percent of the children in a certain school showed unusual potential for intellectual growth. The names of 20 percent of the students were selected randomly, and revealed to the teachers. Eight months later, the chosen children showed significantly greater gains in IQ than the children who hadn't been showered with attention. This effect is also called as Late bloomers effect.

See also

• self-fulfilling prophecy