All psychological sciences are truly something extraordinary. Thanks to them, it is really possible to explain things that seem to ordinary people to be fantastic. Even in ancient times, people noticed the fact that their mind is sometimes able to give out the most amazing visions, produce knowledge and information that changes almost everything. At the same time, psychology for people of that time was a way to control their own kind. Nowadays, the tasks of applied psychology are less prosaic. People learn this science in order to help others later. However, psychology still remained a truly amazing phenomenon. Even after centuries, she is able to explain many incredible things.
Do Prophecies Come True?
What is a prophecy? This is a definite prediction of the future, which may vary, depending on the degree of concretization of the facts in it. The more specific the future is told, the better the prophecy is considered. Most of the population believes in such things, but no one thought that we ourselves are the real source of any future events. In psychology, there is such a thing as the Pygmalion effect. According to this scientific term, it does not matter who predicts the future, and how he does it. Moreover, the status of a magician or sorcerer is not important. Prophecies come true, but not because fate is so destined, but because the person himself expects this.
Pygmalion effect - reality or fiction?
Before you talk about the Pygmalion effect, you should plunge into the depths of history in order to better imagine what is being said. Pygmalion himself is a hero of an ancient Greek legend. According to myth, he was a sculptor. Pygmalion was a true master of his craft and therefore created such a charming sculpture that he fell in love with it. Pygmalion believed in the "reality" of the sculpture so much that he persuaded the gods to revive it. This plot was then repeatedly reflected in the works of literature.
Now back to the present and try to understand what the Pygmalion effect is in psychology . Earlier, it was pointed out that this psychological concept determines the process of internal identification of the surrounding world, in which a person is the source of expected events. Thus, we can conclude that the Pygmalion effect is a person’s expectation of a prophecy that comes true due to human behavior, in other words, a person creates the expected result for himself. This psychological category was discovered by the famous American doctor and psychologist Rosenthal in 1966. After this discovery, the term is called the Rosenthal effect.
The essence of the term
At its core, the concept carries nothing complicated and transcendental. The Pygmalion effect is easy enough to explain, and even easier to verify. This term determines a very real process of expectation, in which a person creates his own future. Moreover, the theory of the effect is based not on the paranormal forces of foresight, but on the real power of expectation. When a person believes in something and knows that this will happen, then, due to his behavioral attributes, he will determine the expected result. The truthfulness or falsity of a prediction does not matter at all. It is all about convincing a person who is waiting for this very event.
Rosenthal Effect Examples
To date, a large number of examples of this effect can be given. Since the discovery, the Rosenthal effect has gathered a lot of followers. The problem is that it really works! For example, statistics show that in most cases, experiments to check some paranormal phenomena end with a positive result for parapsychologists, and not for those who try to refute them. There are other examples of experiments to test the Rosenthal effect. One of them is the most famous.
Rosenthal's experiment
Rosenthal’s Children is one of Rosenthal’s experiments to validate his theory regarding the Pygmalion effect. Its essence was as follows: Rosenthal conducted an analysis of the students' mental abilities in one of the schools in San Francisco.
During the experiment, children with outstanding mental abilities were discovered. Rosenthal told their teachers that in the future these children will show miracles of intellectual development, but at the moment they have not yet fully revealed themselves. Such a statement was very bold, since all the selected children did not show any results at all at all. From the point of view of science, they were at the level of the average student, "good". However, by the end of the year, all of these children showed unimaginable IQ results.
It would seem that the experiment is not special. The psychologist did an excellent job with his job, if not for one “but”! All children who received high IQ results at the end of the year were randomly selected at the very beginning of the experiment. There were absolutely no criteria or selection systems. Rosenthal noted the first students to come across. In this case, the essence of the Rosenthal effect was that the expectation that the teachers had for these students was somehow conveyed to them. Through their actions, teachers consciously pulled their "geniuses" to the top of science and, most importantly, they did it.
The experiment not only proved Rosenthal to be right, but he also showed everyone the power of persuasion. After all, the world and man are one indivisible whole. With their thoughts, people create actions for themselves, and with actions they build the whole world around them. In this case, the Pygmalion effect is a special ratio of thoughts and actions in which a person interprets the world around him according to a previously known result.
Total
In general, the Rosenthal effect explains many inexplicable phenomena. The theory is quite serious and controversial, but the fact of its effectiveness has been proved by many years of practice and real examples. So far, no known experience whose purpose was to prove the reality of the effect has failed.