Great Expectations: The Pygmalion Effect in Management

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Great Expectations: The Pygmalion Effect in Management

Principles of Management · Chapter 11: Motivation in the WorkplaceSection 11.2 · lesson 63 of 11711 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

How a manager's belief about an employee becomes that employee's performance.

  • Describe the Pygmalion effect and its mechanism
  • Distinguish it from expectancy theory
  • Explain the Golem effect and the evidence
  • Apply its implications as a manager

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,455 words). Read along, or search it.

Motivation in the Workplace

Great Expectations: The Pygmalion Effect in Management

What a manager believes about an employee can change how that employee performs. That's the Pygmalion effect, and there's nothing magical about it. We'll define it, and then separate it from a theory that sounds almost the same. We'll trace the four behavioral channels through which an expectation reaches performance. We'll meet its darker twin, the Golem effect, which turns out to be the stronger of the two. We'll look honestly at the evidence, which is real, but more modest than its reputation. Then we'll draw out what a manager should actually do differently. And we'll end with a manager whose quiet first impression came true, because she made it true.

The Effect Defined

Expectation Works Through Behavior

The Pygmalion effect is the finding that a manager's expectations about an employee influence that employee's actual performance. The key word is how. It works through the manager's own behavior. Not through anything mystical, or telepathic. The name comes from the mythological sculptor whose creation came to life. But the effect itself is considerably more mundane, and more explicable. It runs in three steps. A manager holds a belief about an employee. That belief changes how the manager acts toward the employee. And the employee, responding to that changed treatment, tends to perform closer to what was expected of her.

Table 11.2.1

Not the Same as Expectancy Theory

This section's title shares a word with a theory later in this chapter. So the difference has to be made explicit. Table eleven point two point one sets them side by side. In the Pygmalion effect, the expectation belongs to the manager. It's about how the employee will perform. And it works because it changes the manager's behavior toward the employee, which changes the employee's actual performance. In expectancy theory, covered fully in Subchapter eleven point five, the expectation belongs to the employee herself. It's about whether her effort will lead to performance, and to reward. She calculates whether exerting effort is worthwhile, and adjusts her own effort accordingly. So the two share the word expectation, and nothing else. They're unrelated mechanisms, operating on different people's beliefs.

The Mechanism

4 Behavioral Channels

The substance of this section is the mechanism itself. An expectation is proposed to reach performance through four specific behavioral channels. And the employee responds to the manager's behavior in each channel. Not to a belief sitting invisibly in the manager's head. The first is emotional climate. That's the warmth, patience, and encouragement a manager extends. The second is input. That's the information, challenge, and stretching assignments she provides. The third is output. That's the opportunity she gives an employee to respond, contribute, and demonstrate her own capability. And the fourth is feedback, what a manager tells an employee about her performance. Each channel can be turned up, or turned down, without the manager ever noticing she's doing it.

The Channels in Practice

High and Low Expectation, Side by Side

Here are the four channels, traced through a high-expectation pattern and a low-expectation pattern. In emotional climate, high expectation looks warm, encouraging, and patient. Low expectation looks cooler, more clipped, and more critical. In input and challenge, high expectation brings rich information and stretching assignments. Low expectation brings routine tasks, with limited developmental input. In the opportunity to respond, high expectation means generous airtime, and being asked to contribute. Low expectation means limited airtime. She's rarely asked, and she gets interrupted. In feedback, high expectation means specific, frequent, developmental comments. Low expectation means feedback that's vague, sparing, or largely withheld. Notice what's missing. Nothing in either pattern describes what the manager privately believes. Every entry is an observable behavior. In principle, anyone watching could see it.

The Golem Effect

The Negative Counterpart Is Stronger

The Golem effect is the Pygmalion effect's negative counterpart. It's low expectation producing low performance, through the same four channels, running in the opposite direction. And here's an important, counterintuitive observation. Research in this area has generally found the negative effect to be the stronger of the two. A low expectation seems to depress performance more reliably, and more substantially, than a high expectation lifts it. That has a direct practical implication. For most managers, the greater risk isn't failing to expect enough. It's allowing a low judgment, once formed, to quietly constrain an employee through the four channels. And it does that without ever being examined.

The Evidence

Real, Modest, and Conditional

What does the evidence actually show? It deserves an honest characterization. The research began in educational settings. Most notably, a study examined whether teacher expectations about students, manipulated experimentally, affected the students' later measured performance. That original research has drawn substantial methodological criticism in the decades since. The concerns include sample size, and the reliability of the measurement used. So it shouldn't be treated as a settled, unchallenged finding. Later workplace studies have generally found the effect to be real. But the effect sizes they report are modest, not dramatic. The effect also appears stronger under specific conditions. One is when expectations form early in a relationship, before much disconfirming evidence has accumulated. Another is when the manager holds substantial influence over the employee's opportunities. Assignments, visibility, and access to development. That makes sense. The effect depends on the manager's behavior actually shaping what the employee gets a chance to do.

Leader-Member Exchange

One Phenomenon, 2 Traditions

This mechanism connects directly to leader-member exchange, covered fully in Subchapter ten point five. That tradition examines how leaders develop systematically different relationships with different subordinates. Differentiated expectations, as described here, and differentiated resource allocation, as L M X describes it, are best seen as one phenomenon. It's simply viewed from two theoretical traditions. Think about what that means in practice. Take a manager who expects more of one employee than another. She's the same manager who extends that employee warmer treatment. She also gives richer assignments, more opportunity, and better feedback. That's exactly the pattern leader-member exchange documents, from a different starting point.

A Self-Fulfilling Loop

The Structure of Theory X and Theory Y

The Pygmalion effect also shares its logical structure with McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y, from Subchapter four point four. The structure is a loop. A belief about a person produces behavior consistent with that belief. That behavior produces behavior from the other person that appears to confirm the original belief. And the loop closes. The believer rarely recognizes it as partly self-manufactured. There's one difference. Theory X and Theory Y describe assumptions about people in general. The Pygmalion effect applies the identical mechanism to a specific judgment, about a specific individual. It's a judgment formed early, and often revised too slowly.

Managerial Implications

3 Disciplines

Three implications follow directly for a manager. First, examine the basis of an expectation. Ask explicitly what evidence your judgment about a given employee actually rests on. Don't treat an early impression as simply given. Second, watch the four behavioral channels, rather than the belief itself. The belief is invisible, and largely out of reach of direct self-correction. But the channels are observable behaviors. A manager can deliberately monitor them, and adjust her own conduct. Third, treat an early judgment as provisional, not settled. That's because expectations formed early are the ones most likely to shape behavior. They do it before enough disconfirming information has had a chance to accumulate, and correct them.

The Limits

What the Effect Does Not License

Two things this section does not claim deserve an equally direct statement. First, it's not a claim that expecting more always produces more. Expectation works through the four channels. Simply deciding to expect more of someone accomplishes nothing on its own, unless it actually changes the manager's behavior. Second, unrealistic expectation, offered without support, produces failure, not success. Picture a manager who raises the bar, while withholding the input, opportunity, and feedback the person would need to clear it. That doesn't invoke the Pygmalion effect at all. It simply sets someone up to fall short, of a standard she was never given the means to reach.

Case Vignette

Marisol Forms an Early Judgment Without Noticing It

Here's a composite case, constructed for instruction. Marisol supervised a data analysis team. Within her new hire Devon's first two weeks, she formed a quiet impression that he was solid, but unexceptional. It rested mostly on a few unremarkable early assignments, during an unusually chaotic onboarding period. She never said it aloud. But she began, almost imperceptibly, routing his most interesting and ambiguous requests to a colleague she considered more promising. Devon got a steady diet of well-defined, lower-stakes tasks instead. In one-on-ones, she gave him briefer, more procedural feedback than she gave the colleague she rated more highly. And she rarely pushed back, or probed further, when his work met only the minimum bar. Six months later, Devon's output looked unremarkable by most measures. Roughly what Marisol had expected. What she hadn't noticed was her own behavior across all four channels. It had never given Devon much chance to show anything else. Her early judgment hadn't been confirmed by independent evidence. It had been enacted, through six months of her own decisions. Next, Subchapter eleven point three turns to the remaining content theories, from Herzberg, Alderfer, and McClelland.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Great Expectations: The Pygmalion Effect in Management

What is the Pygmalion effect in management?
The Pygmalion effect is the finding that a manager's expectations about an employee influence that employee's actual performance. It works through behavior, not anything mystical: the belief changes how the manager treats the employee, and the employee tends to perform closer to what was expected. Expectations are proposed to travel through four channels: emotional climate, input, output or opportunity to respond, and feedback.
What is the difference between the Pygmalion effect and expectancy theory?
In the Pygmalion effect, the expectation belongs to the manager, and it works by changing the manager's behavior toward the employee. In expectancy theory, the expectation belongs to the employee, who judges whether her effort will lead to performance and reward and adjusts her effort accordingly. The two share the word expectation but are unrelated mechanisms.
What is the Golem effect?
The Golem effect is the negative counterpart of the Pygmalion effect: low expectations produce low performance through the same behavioral channels, such as cooler treatment, routine assignments, little airtime, and vague feedback. Research has generally found it to be the stronger of the two, so the bigger risk for most managers is an unexamined low judgment quietly holding an employee back.
How can managers use the Pygmalion effect in the workplace?
Managers should examine what evidence their expectations about each employee actually rest on, monitor their own observable behavior in climate, input, opportunity, and feedback rather than the invisible belief, and treat early judgments as provisional. Simply expecting more achieves nothing unless behavior changes, and raising the bar without support sets people up to fail. Workplace effects are real but modest.

About the Principles of Management course

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