Restraining Golem and Harnessing Pygmalion in the Classroom: A Laboratory Study of Managerial Expectations and Task Design

Abstract

In seeking to enhance teaching effectiveness, educators and trainers are demonstrating a growing interest in understanding positive expectations and the resulting Pygmalion effect. Unfortunately, the true impact of the Golem effect—Pygmalion in reverse—has gone unproven and the potential negative effects are not wholly understood. Furthermore, the literature largely fails to address the extent to which Pygmalion-related effects may differ based on task design. This study examines the effect of an instructor's verbalized expectations—both negative and positive—on the performance of 351 business-school undergraduate students. Analyses using pre- and posttreatment data collected during controlled-laboratory experiments indicated, most notably, that negative expectations of students' performance on cognitively based tasks tend to degrade that performance. The effects on noncognitively based tasks were, however, positive. Positive expectations had the opposite effect. Implications for management education research and related applications are discussed.

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