The key ideas

Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development

Robert Rosenthal, Lenore Jacobson, 1968

Teachers were told that a test had identified children who were about to make a leap in their development. In reality, the names were picked at random, and a year later many of these children really did gain on an intelligence test. A classic experiment about how our expectations change other people, and an honest account of what's left of it after decades of checks.

Who it is for

For parents, teachers, coaches and managers — for anyone whose opinion of another person can influence who that person becomes.

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated.

What the book is about

In the spring of 1964, every child at one California elementary school took a new test. The teachers were told it could predict which pupils were about to make a sudden leap in their development. In the fall, each teacher received a short list of such “blooming” children from their own class.

There was no special test. The names on the list were picked at random. A year later, many of the children on the list had gained noticeably more on an intelligence test than their classmates.

Robert Rosenthal, a Harvard psychologist, and Lenore Jacobson, the principal of a school in South San Francisco, described this experiment in the book “Pygmalion in the Classroom”. Ahead of you: a horse that “could count”, rats that got smarter because someone expected them to, the experiment itself, and what's left of it after decades of checks.

Idea 1. The horse that could count

The turn of the century, Berlin. A retired teacher, Wilhelm von Osten, shows the public his horse, named Hans. People give Hans an arithmetic problem, and he taps out the answer with his hoof. He rarely makes mistakes. The public is delighted, and the newspapers write about Clever Hans.

The psychologist Oskar Pfungst decided to find out how it worked. It turned out that Hans answered correctly only if the questioner knew the answer and stood where the horse could see him. When the hoof reached the right number, the person would shift his posture ever so slightly or raise his head. Hans stopped. None of the people did this on purpose.

The authors bring up this story in the book for a reason. A person's expectation can pass to another without a single word. And the person doesn't notice it.

A parent is sure the child is about to make a mistake on a problem and freezes with such a look on their face that the child gives up halfway through.

An expectation doesn't stay in your head. It leaks into posture, pauses and gaze, and even those who don't understand words can read them.

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About the author

Robert Rosenthal is an American psychologist and Harvard professor who spent his whole career studying how the expectations of researchers and teachers affect results. Lenore Jacobson was the principal of an elementary school in South San Francisco, where the experiment took place.

All books by this author: Robert Rosenthal, Lenore Jacobson

Terms from the book

  • Meta-analysis
  • Pygmalion effect
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy: An expectation that itself triggers the behavior that makes it come true. The term was coined by the sociologist Robert Merton.
  • Experimenter effect: A distortion of research results because the researcher, without noticing, nudges participants toward what is expected.
  • Double-blind method: A way of running an experiment in which neither the participants nor the researcher know who is in which group. It protects against the influence of expectations.
  • Golem effect: The flip side of the Pygmalion effect: low expectations make a person's results worse.

All terms

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