“How we believe the world is and what we honestly think it can become have powerful effects on how things turn out.”
James Rehm, Executive Editor, National teaching and Learning Forum
When working with people you always expect something from them and their work, especially when working with difficult people you tend to expect as little as possible and after the results you often come out of the room with an “I knew it” state of mind. But does our low expectations affect the end result?
According to a several tests your expectations do.
According to the Rosenthal and Jacobson report teachers led to expect enhanced performance from some children, the children did indeed show that enhancement. In some cases such improvement was about twice that shown by other children in the same class.
Another test was done as an aplication of racial expectations. This effect is seen during Jane Elliott’s blue-eyed versus brown-eyed discrimination exercise, where third graders were divided based on eye color. One group was given preference and regarded as “superior” because of their eye color, with the other group repeatedly being considered inferior in intelligence and learning ability. On the second day of the experiment, the groups were completely reversed, with those oppressed against one day being regarded as superior the next. Elliott gave spelling tests to both groups on each day of the experiment. The students scored very low on the day they were racially “inferior” and very high on the day they were considered racially “superior.”
The purpose of the experiment was to support the hypothesis that reality can be influenced by the expectations of others. This influence can be beneficial as well as detrimental depending on which label an individual is assigned. The observer-expectancy effect, which involves an experimenter’s unconsciously biased expectations, is tested in real life situations. Rosenthal posited that biased expectancies can essentially affect reality and create self-fulfilling prophecies as a result.
