What You Expect Is
What You Get
Stefany Holdsworth
Mariah Wolf
Goeun Na
Lindzee Newsom
James Deahl
Intelligence, Cognition and Memory
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Self-fulfilling prophecy= if we expect something
to happen in a certain way, our expectation will
tend to make it so.
Idea of self-fulfilling prophecy first started in
1911 with “Clever Hans.”
Mr. von Osten
Intelligence, Cognition and Memory
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Experimenter expectancy: Robert Rosenthal
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“Maze-Bright” rats
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“Maze-Dull” rats
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Introduced how biases can occur outside the
laboratory
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“Pygmalion Effect”
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Method
 In cooperation with Oak School
Administration: Grades 1-6 give IQ test
 Tests of General Ability: TOGA
 Nonverbal test so the student’s scores
wouldn’t depend upon school-learned
skills and one that the teachers at the
school were not familiar with.
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Study Design
 Test given at the beginning of the year.
 Teachers were told the students were
given the “Harvard Test of Inflicted
Acquisition.” The deception was important
to give teachers certain expectations from
the students.
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Teachers were given the names of the students
that had scored in the top 20% of the Harvard
test.
Key to the Study:
 Students’ names were purely chosen at random
for this sample (experimental group).
 Only difference between these children and the
others (control group) is that they had been
identified by the teachers as ones that would
show unusual intellectual gains.
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Near the end of the school year, students
were given the TOGA test once again.
The degree in change of I.Q. was
calculated for each child.
Differences in the control and
experimental group could then be
examined to see if the expectancy effect
had been created in a real-world setting.
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Results
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For the entire school, the children for
whom the teachers expected greater
intellectual growth averaged significantly
greater improvement than did the control
children.
I.Q. Score Gains: Grades 1-6
30
25
20
I.Q.
Increase 15
(points) 10
5
0
Control
Group
First
Third
Fifth
Grade Level
Experimental
Group
(identified
"bloomers")
Percentage of 1st and 2nd Grade Students with
Major Gains in I.Q. Scores
80
Experimental
Group
(Identified
Bloomers")
60
Percentage of
children
40
20
Control
Group
0
10 points 20 points 30 points
Amount of gain
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Discussion
 As Rosenthal suspected, the teacher’s
expectations of their students’ behavior
became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 Rosenthal suggested the importance of
why the self-fulfilling prophecy was not
demonstrated in the higher grade levels.
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1. Younger children are more malleable or
“transformable.” Even if they are not,
teachers have a tendency to believe that
they are.
2. Younger students don’t have as wellestablished reputations.
3. Younger children may be more easily
influenced and more susceptible to the
subtle and unintentional processes that
teachers use to communicate
performance expectation to them.
4. Lower-grade teachers may communicate
their expectancies more often than
higher-grade teachers.
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Significance of Findings
 The real importance of the study relates to
the potential long-lasting effects of
teachers’ expectations on the scholastic
performance of students.
 Leads to the question of the fairness of
I.Q. tests.
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Subsequent Research
 Chaiken, Sigler, and Derlega (1974)
 Teachers had been informed that certain
students were extremely bright.
 Recorded classrooms by video camera to
detect subtle ways which influenced the
brighter students’ performance (i.e. eye
contact, favorable reactions from other
students, and more constructive
comments from teachers)
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Recent Applications
 Rosenthal’s theory of “interpersonal
expectancies” has exerted its influence in
numerous areas other than education.
 1996 and 1997: over 50 scientific articles
citing Rosenthal’s “Pygmalion” research.
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Recent Applications
Madon, Jussim, and Eccles (1997):
 (Madon is a professor at ISU and is
currently researching self-fulfilling
prophecies in educational settings.
 This study found that low-achieving
children were significantly more likely to
be influenced by teachers’ expectations
than high-achievers.
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Recent Applications
Discussion- How these studies might effect:
 Racial profiling
 Sex biases
 Child achievement in the home
 Socio-economic status
Discussion
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Do you think it’s possible that some children’s
learning abilities may have been stunted due to
an unsatisfactory test score, leading to negative
or insufficient attention from the teacher?
How would you react if you were the teacher
and you were given I.Q. scores? Would you treat
students differently according to their scores?
Do you think the self-fulfilling prophecy is true?