The Pygmalion Effect

The Pygmalion Effect, as stated by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968/1992), is the succes or the fail of someone influenced by the expectations upon that person. It's also called the teacher-expectancy effect. For instance, a student that is put on more success expectations will be more likely to succeed that a student that is expected to fail.

I found on the Internet a case that could help us understand more what this is, and I will attach a video at the end of this post that explains it with other words.

The case is the following:

Feldman & Prohaska (1979) performed an experiment to study the effect of student expectations of teachers. One group was told their teacher was "quite effective," and another group was told their teacher was "incompetent." The effect of these positive and negative expectations were measured in terms of student attitudes toward the teacher, scores on tests, and "nonverbal behavior" of the students toward the teachers. The teacher was blind to what the students thought about him/her. There were clear differences in all three measures based on a positive or negative expectation. Students with a negative expectation "rated the lesson as being more difficult, less interesting, and less effective." Students with a positive expectation scored 65.8% on the test, and those with a negative expectation scored 52.2%. In terms on nonverbal behavior, "subjects leaned forward more to good teachers than poor teachers." There was some evidence that students with a positive expectation had better eye contact with the teacher. Overall, the expecation of the teacher affects overall learning outcomes.

Pygmalion Effect Video

With this, I accomplish Task # 3.

References and Resources: Academic dictionaries and encyclopedias. 2009. The Pygmalion Effect. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/296828. Accesed 12 August 2010. (Case also found here).

Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZZs5atIGDU&feature=related
Images taken from:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSYhSfQZdTAQvU1iqYAmNjWuHbwczVzvyN4SHnbBuEdD8m6-4TcRPc29FJ85wiPTEOCmlGi4Js5k8RxwNFtRCLL4tVUedPZmlxJZ5jvpsJBxsUad4AmhnP2bbdMJWpA_hA6JcCVioKkaY/s400/mitos_griegos_pygmalion_2.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6OYkBC_TspOV3z4AhTKxisQkGrVp6OU4SulbqHDQY50k7OskS6kLeQNZeuXynEd3UTGem1u5aRwV4AuMBJ6d-Ao4vFWoJFjRpRbWEgn_U2i2xlDinLmiimcRBf45sFL94sMFbOqCVTsQ/s320/Galatea.jpg
http://www.calgarybeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/PYGMALION-FACTOR.jpg

Organizational Behavior

Despite of the globalization affecting our world, which make each person in the world be more connected with each other and getting to know them better, all cultures are still very different from each other, which opposes what most of us think and that's that all people is the same.

There are Five Cultural Dimensions as explained by Proffesor Geert Hofstede as Power Distance Index, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainity Avoidance Index and Long Term Orientation. As a matter to the Task # 2 of Organizations & Cultures' class, I will explain Individualism and give an hypothetical but realistic example.


Individualism, which is at the opposite side of Collectivism, and explained by the Itim International webpage (link below), is when the relations between individuals within a culture is loose and everyone is supposed to look only after himself and one's immediate family.
I found write about this Dimension because I found it one of the most important to keep in account, because within an organization everything is stablished and its mostly team work (related to Collectivisim), I will explain this with an example:

For instance, an Indian is hired by an U.S. firm to work in the United States. The indian, because of its Eastern culture and education, is supposed to work in a collective way, and the U.S. organization may be working under in an individual way. This may come to problems within the employees or even damage the Boss-Employee relation because of the ways of working of both individuals, and may also reduce production or efficiency of the area in which the Indian is working.

With this, I accomplish Taks # 2 of Organizations and Cultures' class.

References and Resources: Itim International. 2009. Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions. http://www.geert-hofstede.com/. Accesed 12 August 2010.
Image taken from http://www.gotoofareast.com/toblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/collective-not-quite.jpg