How DO you “love people into greatness?” Ummmm… You love them! The Pygmalion Effect.
(Bloom, SRB Ventures, adaptation)
In an ancient poem written by the Roman poet Ovid, a sculptor named Pygmalion crafts a sculpture of a woman from ivory. His work is so vivid and lifelike that the sculpture surpasses the beauty of any woman he has ever known.
Slowly, he begins to treat it as though it were alive. He dresses it. Gives it gifts. Talks to it. Imagines conversations with it. Eventually, he falls in love with it—and she becomes real.
The story of Pygmalion entered the mainstream lexicon in 1968, via a psychologist named Robert Rosenthal.
In the study, conducted at a public elementary school, researchers told teachers that certain students were predicted (“based on testing”) to experience rapid cognitive growth in the year ahead. They were never instructed to treat these children differently.
What the teachers didn’t know was that these children were selected at random.
The results were fascinating:
By the end of the year, the students who had been marked as cognitive bloomers had experienced the greatest IQ gains, an effect that was strongest in the younger children.
The actual results were caused by subconscious micro-behaviors by the teachers towards the randomly selected students that quietly signaled belief:
• More eye contact
• More patience after mistakes
• More opportunities to answer
• More detailed feedback
The inadvertent micro-behaviors (respect, love, kindness, attention) quietly made the children feel capable. This became a part of their identity, as does the opposite.
Rosenthal wrote:
“When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur.”
Drawing upon Ovid’s tale, Rosenthal coined the phrase Pygmalion Effect to refer to the impact of belief and expectations in shaping outcomes.
We rise (or fall) to the level of expectations that others have for us:
• Those who have high expectations placed on them are more likely to internalize these expectations and improve their performance accordingly.
• Those who have low expectations placed on them are more likely to internalize these expectations and weaken their performance accordingly.
As a human, if there’s one sticky takeaway from today, it’s this…
The people you surround yourself with determine your outcomes:
• If you surround yourself with people who believe you are capable of more, who encourage you to think bigger, to dream, you will rise to the level of those expectations.
• If you surround yourself with people who belittle you, who laugh at your dreams, who tell you to be realistic, and who love the world system, you will fall to the level of those expectations.
What better reason do you need to choose wisely when it comes to the people you allow into your life?
The Pygmalion Effect: you CAN “love one another into greatness.”
SystemOrEcosystem.com
Courtesy of Ben-Jammin’ Benjamin Roberts
