Rosenthal Effect / Pygmalion Effect – Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

A SCARS Institute Scam Victim Recovery Insight

The Rosenthal Effect is the tendency for a person’s performance or behavior to be influenced by the expectations that other people hold about them. It is also commonly called the Pygmalion Effect.

The basic idea is straightforward: when teachers, managers, parents, clinicians, coaches, or other influential people expect someone to perform well, they can unconsciously treat that person in ways that improve the person’s chances of succeeding. Low expectations can work in the opposite direction.

The effect is associated with psychologist Robert Rosenthal and educator Lenore Jacobson. In their well-known 1968 study, teachers were told that certain students were likely to show unusually strong intellectual growth during the school year. The students had actually been selected largely at random. Some of those students later showed greater measured improvement, suggesting that teacher expectations had influenced how the children were treated.

The proposed process is not mysterious. Expectations can change behavior in subtle ways. A teacher who expects a student to succeed may give that student more time to answer, provide more detailed feedback, offer additional encouragement, tolerate mistakes longer, ask harder questions, or communicate greater confidence. The student experiences a different interpersonal environment and can gradually begin behaving in ways that confirm the original expectation.

A simplified sequence looks like this:

Expectation → changed treatment → changed self-perception and behavior → changed performance → apparent confirmation of the expectation

This is why the Rosenthal Effect is closely related to the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The negative version matters just as much. If an authority figure assumes that someone is incapable, unreliable, unintelligent, difficult, or unlikely to improve, that expectation can influence tone, opportunities, patience, feedback, and attention. The person receiving that treatment can become less confident, participate less, take fewer risks, or disengage. Poorer performance then appears to confirm the original judgment.

The research literature since Rosenthal and Jacobson has shown that expectancy effects are real, but they are not unlimited. Expectations do not magically create ability, and the size of the effect varies considerably depending on the setting, relationship, age of the person, strength of the expectation, and how the expectation changes actual behavior.

For scam victims, the concept could be particularly relevant. A traumatized victim who repeatedly hears, directly or indirectly, that the person is foolish, gullible, incapable of making decisions, permanently damaged, or likely to be scammed again can begin absorbing those expectations. Family members, professionals, support providers, and even other victims can unintentionally reinforce a damaged identity.

The reverse is also possible. Expectations such as “This person can learn what happened,” “This person can rebuild judgment,” or “This person is capable of participating in recovery” can affect how others speak to and involve the victim. The important distinction is that constructive expectations are not empty praise. They influence whether the person is given information, responsibility, time, opportunities to make decisions, and room to regain competence.

That makes the Rosenthal Effect especially interesting in trauma recovery because expectations can influence not only performance, but identity. If everyone surrounding a victim treats the person as permanently fragile, the social environment can begin reinforcing fragility. If the person is treated as injured but capable of learning, participating, deciding, and improving, the environment communicates a very different expectation.

There is also a related inverse concept called the Golem Effect, in which low expectations contribute to poorer performance. Together, the two concepts describe how other people’s expectations can become part of the conditions shaping what someone eventually does.

Prof. (Emeritus) Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
August 2026