{"id":33654,"date":"2026-09-11T15:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T13:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/martinafino.it\/effetto-pigmalione-rosenthal-aspettative\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T22:31:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T20:31:51","slug":"effetto-pigmalione-rosenthal-aspettative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinafino.it\/en\/effetto-pigmalione-rosenthal-aspettative\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pygmalion Effect (or Rosenthal Effect): How Expectations Change Outcomes"},"content":{"rendered":"

A teacher who is convinced a student is bright talks to them differently, gives them more time to answer, expects more \u2014 and that student often really does improve. It's not magic: the expectations of the people around us change how they treat us, and how we're treated changes, over time, how we actually behave. This phenomenon has a precise name in psychology:  the Pygmalion effect<\/strong>, or Rosenthal effect.<\/p>\n

What is the Pygmalion effect (or Rosenthal effect)<\/h2>\n

The Pygmalion effect describes how high expectations of a person tend to produce, over time, better performance<\/strong> in that person \u2014 not because expectations act on their own, but because they change the behavior of the person holding them, which in turn influences the person receiving them. It's a form of self-fulfilling prophecy<\/strong>: we believe something is true, we act as if it were, and that behavior helps make it true.<\/p>\n

The name \"Pygmalion\" comes from the myth of the sculptor who falls in love with the statue he created, which then comes to life; the name \"Rosenthal effect\" comes directly from the psychologist who first studied it systematically.<\/p>\n

The Rosenthal and Jacobson experiment: how it began<\/h2>\n

In the 1960s, psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson<\/strong> conducted an experiment that became a classic of social psychology, in an American elementary school. Some teachers were told that a group of students \u2014 actually selected completely at random \u2014 had scored particularly well on an aptitude test. The teachers didn't know this: they genuinely believed they had students with above-average potential in their classroom.<\/p>\n

By the end of the year, those children \u2014 chosen at random, remember \u2014 had achieved significantly greater academic improvement than their classmates. Nothing had changed in their starting abilities: what had changed was how the teachers, believing in them, had treated them day after day.<\/p>\n

How it works: from expectations to behavior<\/h2>\n

The psychological mechanism has nothing magical about it, and it has been observed in dozens of contexts since then. When we expect someone to succeed, we tend, without realizing it, to:<\/p>\n