Do expectations influence Academic Performance?

Did you know that the expectations we set ourselves have a lot of influence? Whether it is expectations about our own lives or about how others should behave, what we should achieve, or the decisions others should make, these assumptions have a great influence on the way in which we and those around us perceive and relate to the environmentalthough we are not aware of it. In the words of the American writer Earl Nightingale, "Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations."

And this, of course, is reflected in all areas of life, from the goals that a person proposes and the couples he chooses to the emotions he experiences or the academic results he gets. In fact, numerous studies have shown that the expectations that parents and/or teachers have about student performance can positively or negatively affect their academic performance. It is what the American psychologist Robert Rosenthal called the Pygmalion Effect or self-fulfilling prophecies. A much more common phenomenon than we think and that, to a greater or lesser extent, affects us all.

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Expectations, our way of preparing for the future

Expectations are part of our life, whether we like it or not. They begin to form as we grow, from a complex combination of experiences, desires and knowledge, and accompany us throughout our existence. In this way, we end up carrying numerous assumptions about the future, more or less realistic, about our own life or the lives of those around us. This is so because our mind needs to make assumptions to guide our behavior.

In fact, most of the decisions we make are not based exclusively on objective data, as we usually think, but on the expectations we have about the results. Basically, behind every decision lies the confidence that our expectations will come true and we will have the results we hope for. And this is not negative in itself. Expectations prepare us for action, they make us mentally anticipate what may happen, helping us to foresee an action plan that allows us to avoid unpleasant surprises. The problem is that these expectations often condition our decisions and limit our opportunities.

Whether it is your own expectations or those of others, expectations often lead us to take results for granted when in reality they are nothing more than mere assumptions. Thus, we end up acting accordingly, clinging to that preconceived idea as if it were a lifeline. in question, reducing our range of options and promoting the expected result, without hardly realizing it. This is what often happens with children who perceive the expectations that their parents, grandparents, teachers or any other person in their environment has about them and act accordingly, driven unconsciously and involuntarily, in an attempt to satisfy the image that the rest have of they.

This was confirmed by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson in their book "Pygmalion at school" in which they collected their experimental studies on the effect of expectations, specifically in the field school. In this reading, the authors affirm: "our behavior is largely determined by rules and expectations that allow us to anticipate how such a person will behave in a given situation, even though we have never met such a person and do not know how he differs from the the rest". An effect that occurs in all areas of our lives, but which is very easy to notice in the academic field.

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How expectations influence academic performance

Did you know academic success is not only determined by intelligence, but also depends on other factors such as curiosity, optimism, self-confidence and expectations? This was revealed by an investigation carried out by the professor at the University of Oviedo Francisco Martín del Buey in which he analyzed the influence of expectations on academic performance. However, this is not a new result, since in the 1960s the psychologist Robert Rosenthal demonstrated how the expectations of a researcher could influence the behavior of the subjects studied and, years later, he analyzed the same effect in the field school.

In one of their most interesting experiments, Rosenthal and Jacobson applied an intelligence test to a group of children before the start of the school year to identify students who could stand out from the rest of the class. At least this was what they told their future teachers. After analyzing the results, they were given a list of “special” students who had an exceptional capacity for learning and creativity. What the teachers were not told, however, is that the students on the list had actually been chosen at random.

After six months, after one year, and then at the end of two years, the researchers repeated the test to the students and verified that, As expected, the students with a “special” ability had improved their IQ compared to the rest of the students. How did this happen? It turns out that teachers developed higher expectations of “special” students, so that they proposed more complex and advanced study plans and tasks, while the rest were presented simpler activities and according to their intellectual level because their expectations were lower.

Basically, the teachers adapted the school program to the children according to the expectations they had of them. Hence, they stimulated more the students who they thought were better and lowered the bar in the case of “less advanced” children. The result? The expectations ended up being fulfilled as if it were a prophecy. Children with “superior” abilities perceived expectations about them, put in more effort and obtained better results, while those with other students put less effort into their tasks because they considered them simple and not very motivating, which ended up having an impact on their performance.

Undoubtedly, expectations, especially when they are based on more subjective than objective aspects, can have a huge and unpredictable influence on academic performance. Are directly affect motivation, self-image, self-esteem, and self-esteem. Believing in yourself or knowing that others trust you can provide the drive and motivation to try harder and do your best, achieving better results. The same happens in the opposite case. Not having too high expectations about our performance or the performance of our children can lead to a lack of commitment and demotivation, reaffirming those expectations.

However, it is not only about having low or high expectations, its intensity is also important. There are many cases of parents or teachers who set the bar too high and have very high expectations about the performance of children and/or young people who ruin a school failure. Or, on the contrary, those cases in which there are very low expectations that end in academic success.

In the same way that high expectations can be motivating and set students up for success, too high expectations can lead to excessive pressure and a fear of failure which, poorly managed, can not only inhibit curiosity and interest in studying, but also limit freedom of thought, cognitive abilities, and damage self-esteem.

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The vicious circle of expectations and academic results: psychological consequences

There is no doubt that expectations, both others' and personal, can play a significant role in academic results. It is an element that can instill motivation and inspiration or, on the contrary, drain them. However, they not only work as an activating agent that then disappears, but they accompany us throughout the process. In this way, positive expectations about academic results can effectively lead to good performance, which, in turn, reinforces those expectations. In the opposite case it happens exactly the same.

Nurturing negative expectations about academic outcomes can affect cognitive performance, which in turn reaffirms those expectations to get you back to square one.

It is a vicious circle from which it is very difficult to get out. and that it can gain special force in cases in which there are low academic results. In these situations, the feedback between low academic performance and negative expectations can generate numerous psychological consequences that go beyond the school context and that can affect the emotional stability of the person, since they can give a step to:

1. negative self concept

Having low academic results that are fed back by increasingly negative expectations can significantly affect self-concept and self-image. Because of that a person can develop a negative image of himself, believing that she is not good enough, intelligent, creative or disciplined, which in the long run not only will have an impact on their school results, but also on their interpersonal relationships, their future goals or their decisions.

2. demotivation

Getting low academic results over and over again can cause a person to end up losing motivation and stop striving to improve. The result will be that you will enter a vicious circle in which you will obtain worse and worse results and you will feel more demotivated. A problem that can also affect other spheres of your life, causing you to lose motivation to discover new passions or seek new challenges.

3. feeling of failure

Academic results can influence a person's sense of success or failure. In the same way that getting good grades can create a sense of success, getting low results can lead to a sense of failure and make a person feel like a loser. And from there to believing that you can also fail in other areas of your life, there is only one step.

4. Low self-esteem

Feeling that we are not capable of obtaining good academic results can also affect self-esteem. This since it leads us to think that we are not good enough, creative or intelligent. However, the problem is that this way of thinking can deeply damage our global self-esteem, having repercussions in other contexts of daily life.

5. negative emotions

Another of the most common psychological consequences of obtaining low academic results is related to emotional balance. Feeling that you have failed can generate anger, resentment and pessimism, but it can also be a source of disappointment, frustration and dissatisfaction. Poorly managed, these emotions can affect relationships with people around them, damage the self-esteem and become the perfect breeding ground for developing psychological problems such as depression.

Concluding...

Fortunately, it is possible to learn to work with expectations to prevent them from having such a profound effect on our lives or on the lives of the people around us. surround them, in the same way that it is possible to learn to manage academic results in a different way to counteract their impact in other spheres of life. life.

Through psychological therapy it is possible to identify the expectations that prevent growth or that represent an added burden for people of the environment, modify the way in which a person relates to these expectations and use them in their favor to improve their results academics.