There are times in life where how we think about a situation can actually turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps we’re confident in the outcome, or maybe we’ve given up before we’ve even started. And these thoughts end up affecting our performance, and we wind up with the results we had expected.
Maybe you’ve experienced this firsthand. But did you know that our expectations hold power over more than just how we personally perform. They can additionally affect how others perform, whether we realize it or not.
Predicting High Achievers
In 1965, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson did a study1 involving students at a public school. Before the school year started, the teachers were informed which students in their upcoming class could be expected to perform well academically, based on an assessment the students had taken. The teachers were not suppose to share the results with the students, nor were they to spend any more or less time with these students on account of the assessment.
At the end of the year, the student’s were assessed again, and the researchers found that, on average, those who had been identified as high achievers did indeed outperform their peers. Which is just what you would expect, right?
The interesting things about the study, though, is the students the researchers identified as ‘high achievers’ weren’t actually any different than any of their peers. They were literally random students who had been selected as the experimental group for the study. Meaning, the only difference between them and their peers was their teacher’s belief that they had the aptitude to be high achievers.
The Pygmalion Effect
The study was conducted to see if the expectations of the teachers—even if not verbalized, or knowingly communicated—had any impact on an individual student’s actual development. And on average, the researchers found that it did.
This phenomenon came to be known as the Pygmalion Effect2—based on the story of Pygmalion, who eventually saw the sculpture he loved come to life. It describes how our belief in the potential of someone else can actually result in that potential being realized. And the crazy thing is it can all happen even if we’re not consciously aware of it.
It’s a sobering thought, realizing that our expectations and beliefs about others can have a real impact in their lives. And if our expectations can affect others in a positive way, it seems to reason that they could have a negative effect as well. Maybe we have low expectations, a lack of belief, in someone, and in the end we experience exactly what we expected. Or we expect great things, believing in the other person, and they perform accordingly.
Will this happen every time? Nope. People are ultimately responsible for what they choose to do. But this doesn’t negate the fact that we can have some measure of influence, whether we realize it or not.
Which means, it can be valuable to pay attention to the beliefs and expectations we have about those around us—our clients, teammates, spouse, children, neighbors, or friends. Are we looking for the good, and believing in the best? Or have we already assumed the worst?
Because sometimes our expectations—whether good or bad—have a way of transforming into reality.
2 I found this term and an overview of the above study in The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, pp. 83-4. He also discusses the relevance this concept has to the workplace.