The Pygmalion effect: the 4 keys to understand it

The Pygmalion effect It is an important concept in the field of psychology. Let's look at a series of fundamental key ideas to understand it.

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Origin of the effect

According to Greek mythology, King Pygmalion was unable to find the perfect woman. For this reason, he insisted on molding the sculpture of a beautiful young woman whom he called Galatea and with whom he fell in love.

The gods granted her wish to turn that statue into reality with a kiss from the monarch. The way in which Pygmalion admired Galatea made her a woman convinced of her greatness.

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Rosenthal experiment and the value of expectations

In 1966, psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson proposed to carry out an experiment in the school that Lenore (California, USA) directed at that time.

The study in question wanted to show whether the belief system of teachers regarding their students could exert a change in the results of the evaluations of the boys.

To do this, they were given a supposed intelligence test from the prestigious Harvard University, which did not actually measure such an aspect, but the center's teachers were led to believe.

At the end of the course, the children with high scores in said test obtained better academic results in relation to the rest of the students.

The conclusion reached by the researchers was that the expectations that teachers had had influenced their way of treating, educating and evaluating students.

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The importance and impact of words

As parents we have a great responsibility in how we shape the self esteem and certain aspects of the personality of our children.

Over the years, more weight has been given to the belief system and the social interactions of our environment versus biological determinism to explain how a person is the way he is.

It is because of that we must enhance the skills and outstanding deeds of our children and motivate them when they do something that can be improved.

Our moral obligation is to give them the support and sustenance they need so that they can trust themselves, freeing themselves from the fear of failure. If we want them to have a strong and positive inner voice when they reach adulthood, the first step is for their parents' voice to be encouraging and not blaming.

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The self-fulfilling prophecy

A few years ago, a famous brand of soft drinks and isotonic drinks launched a campaign with enormous social success.

In it he tried to explain, in a brilliant way, that if you tell a child that he is worthless or that he is going to fall, that child will end up falling. On the contrary, if you encourage him, express your confidence in him and let him know that if he falls you will help him get up, his behavior will change radically.

As the great psychiatrist Marian Rojas Estapé would say, the recorder of childhood significantly affects adults. If in that recorder, which exerts a lot of influence in the first years of our lives, we have introduced continuous affirmations of discredit, self-esteem will be diminished and that will make the person believe that he is not capable of achieving what others can.

This is what is called the Golem effect., this being an incomplete figure full of inner shadows. If, on the other hand, his tape recorder is full of positive messages, your performance and his self-esteem will suffer. positively conditioned, becoming the Galatea phenomenon, to which we have already referred at the beginning of the Article.

As an example, if the reader is a father like me, he will automatically be reflected. If you say to your child: “everything falls off, don't pick it up, you're going to throw it away...” it is most likely that he will end up throwing it away. Throughout my experience I have met people who they remembered those little details as something traumatic and they have conditioned their behavior in life by fulfilling the prophecy that was repeated to them as children.

Let's make the prophecies we generate in our children positive and we will change not only our beliefs about their abilities, but also their own. Only in this way will we build strong and solid scaffolding within them that will make them more self-confident when we are no longer there to help them.