Positively influence other people's lives by telling them you believe in them, you think they are a good person, they possess particular good qualities, and you expect they will perform well because they have the ability to do so.
- The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse.
- It is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell so much in love with the perfectly beautiful statue he created that the statue came to life.
- According to the Pygmalion effect, the targets of the expectations internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly.
- A similar process works in the opposite direction in the case of low expectations.
- The idea behind the Pygmalion effect is that increasing the leader's expectation of the follower's performance will result in better follower performance.
- Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regard to education and social class.