...The Pygmalion Effect There is a tale from Ancient Greece of how a prince turned a statue from ivory to life and married her. It is the story of Pygmalion. Remarkably, the principles of this story are relevant to modern techniques of leadership. Read this article to find out how. [pic] Enlarge Image A team does as well as you and the team think they can. This idea is known as "the self-fulfilling prophecy". When you believe the team will perform well, in some strange, magical way they do. And similarly, when you believe they won’t perform well, they don’t. There is enough experimental data to suggest that the self-fulfilling prophecy is true. One unusual experiment in 1911 concerned a very clever horse called Hans. This horse had the reputation for being able to add, multiply, subtract, and divide by tapping out the answer with its hooves. The extraordinary thing was that it could do this without its trainer being present. It only needed someone to put the questions. On investigation, it was found that when the questioner knew the answer, he or she transmitted various very subtle body language clues to Hans such as the raising of an eyebrow or the dilation of the nostrils. Hans simply picked up on these clues and continued tapping until he arrived at the required answer. The questioner expected a response and Hans obliged. In similar vein, an experiment was carried out at a British school into the performance of a new intake of pupils. At the start of the year,...
Words: 672 - Pages: 3
...When comparing the play Pygmalion and the Hallmark movie The Makeover, there are numerous similarities and differences that are revealed between the characters and general story line. Pygmalion takes place in London, England around the beginning of the 20th century where The Makeover is placed in Boston, Massachusetts during modern times. Both story lines follow the general theme of the Hallmark movie’s title, a makeover. However, this makeover doesn’t occur under the same circumstances. Pygmalion’s main character, Eliza Doolittle, first appears on the streets selling cheap flowers to passersby’s. Eliza quickly becomes acquainted by another man on the streets, Henry Higgins, who starts rambling on about how important education and proper English is for society. Eliza dreams of opening a flower shop where she can enjoy herself and make some money. The only problem though is that she doesn’t have enough money to open a flower shop nor does she speak properly enough for people to understand her. At last, Henry states that he could turn Eliza into a totally different person,...
Words: 805 - Pages: 4
...Pygmalion in management The Pygmalion effect is based on the fact that people often live up to the high expectations of other individuals whether their managers, teachers or relatives. Others expectations often lead people to transcend their own abilities and talents and cause self-fulfilling prophecies. J Sterling Livingston, in this article, explores the various facets of this effect in management by looking at the results of different experiments related to it. In one of the examples of the Metropolitian Life Insurance Co., an experiment was carried out in which employees were divided to groups on the basis of previous performance and assigned managers of commensurate ability. As expected, the people of the superior performance group lived up to their expectations and performed admirably; on the other hand, the productivity of the lower performance group declined. However, the anomaly was the average performance group which performed beyond expectations the reason being the manager in charge of the group having a more positive image of her than the perception held by her superiors and the subsequent rub off this image and self-expectation of greater performance onto the entire group. The Pygmalion effect can also be observed in medical science in the form of placebo effect when a non-existent drug administered to patients by physicians who reinforce the efficacy of the same in their recovery often leads to miraculous results. Communication is however a critical factor...
Words: 473 - Pages: 2
...INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT OF ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR AND LEADERSHIP Submitted To: Mr. Madan Lal Pradhan (Course Instructor) Submitted By: Manish Ratna Sakya MBAe IV ‘A’ 1. What is Pygmalion effect or self fulfilling prophecy? Ans: The Pygmalion effect is the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. It also states that high achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectations. The belief of Pygmalion effect will lead people to perform closer to the expectations that they set for themselves. The studies of the Pygmalion effect are difficult to conduct. However, the results show a positive correlation between leader expectation and follower performance, but it is argued that the studies are done in an unnatural, manipulated setting. The paradox of the Pygmalion Effect is that having high expectations of people will produce better results, but it’s also more likely you’ll be disappointed. In business, managers, bosses, and corporate superiors can often influence the work and success of employees by expecting them to either rise or fall. The Pygmalion effect is very similar to the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes it to become true. The effect has both positive and negative outcomes — a person expected by his or her superiors to succeed will, but the opposite is also usually true. 2. What evidence of self...
Words: 548 - Pages: 3
...The Pygmalion Effect in Management J. Sterling Livingston’s article “Pygmalion in Management,” published in the September/October 1988 edition of the Harvard Business Review, details a bizarrely effective phenomenon known as the “Pygmalion Effect” and it’s effect on managed staff. In short, this effect is defined as employees responding to the expectations and attitude of their manager towards them by living up to said expectations and effectively transforming the employees into the persons the manager perceives them as. Livingston firmly believes in the existence of this phenomenon and explains into detail the inherent double-edged nature of the effect and how a manager can use it to his or her advantage. After studying Livingston’s findings and following up with research and experience of my own, I am compelled to agree with Livingston’s views on the effect and how they can be used to enhance productivity and employee satisfaction. To look further into the Pygmalion Effect, one must first understand the mythos of Pygmalion, of which the phenomenon is named. Pygmalion, a Cypriot sculptor, carved the image of a woman out of ivory to fill the void of a lover and companion in his life. As the days went by, he grew increasingly infatuated with the statue and obsessively wished for it to be an actual human being. The gods took pity on his plight and granted Pygmalion’s wish. As he returned to his love, Pygmalion realized that his creation had taken human form as he had constantly...
Words: 950 - Pages: 4
...Pygmalion Shannon Childers Western Governors University Pygmalion I found Pygmalion to be a very funny and entertaining work. I am from the South and have been told I have an accent. So I felt like I related to Eliza in that sense. I have observed how the language you use can influence other’s impression. When speaking on the phone with people I am not acquainted with I will change the way I speak. I do this so that others will not have any problems understanding me and so that I am not considered a backwoods redneck. The most interesting part of the book is the ending. We are lead to believe throughout the play that there is some sort of love affair developing between Eliza and Mr. Higgins. The play concludes with them fighting with each other and Eliza declaring that she could teach others. Mr. Higgins finally sees her as a strong women and invites her to stay with him as well as buy him pair of gloves and a ham. As Eliza is walking away she tells him good-bye and that she is never going to see him again (Shaw, 1912). In 1916 Shaw was upset that critics and audiences were actually changing the way the play ended in order to give it a happy ending. So he wrote an essay “What Happened Afterwards,” which proceeds to continue telling the story and Eliza does not end up with Mr. Higgins (Solomon, 1964). Pygmalion was published in 1912 in a time where there was a differentiation between the upper and lower class of society. In this time period women were...
Words: 1089 - Pages: 5
...Language Test (Project/Final Test) Name: _______________________ Date: ______ Course/Year: _________________ I. Encircle the correct answer that will complete each sentence in each item. 1. Ms. Santos with the faculty members ___ dancing gracefully. a. are b. is c. was d. were 2. Ana and Maria ___ to the park last night. a. go b. goes c. gone d. went 3. Basketball ___ my passion. a. are b. is c. was d. were 4. I ___ her once. a. love b. loving c. loved d. has love 5. Yesterday ___ a blast! a. was b. were c. is d. are 6. Tomorrow is the ___ of everything. a. started b. starts c. starting d. start 7. I will be ___ for good. a. forget b. forgot c. has forget d. forgotten 8. To be ___ guilty is a dead end. a. find b. finding c. found d. have finding 9. ___ is waiting for the meeting to start. a. All b. Several c. Everyone d. Everything 10. The person ___ is accused was not the criminal. a. who b. which c. that d. whom 11. ___ birthday is tomorrow. a. My b. Mine c. We d. You 12. The documents scattered ___ the floor. a. over b. throughout c. past d. since 13. The water ___ the earth is clean. a. underneath b. over c. under d. toward 14. The man ___ the house is tall. a. to b. outside c. round ...
Words: 797 - Pages: 4
...Lady in Pygmalion My Fair Lady is compared to Pygmalion My Fair Lady, directed by George Cukor, re-creates George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion on the big screen. Both stories are told in their own unique way, yet still bare the same story. Both stories tell the story of a young Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, who wishes to improve her English language with hopes of working as a clerk in a flower shop one day. In the beginning, the girl meets Higgins, an unkind, condescending gentleman while trying to hide from an unexpected rainfall. Higgins takes the girl into his home and teaches her how to become a lady. By the end, the girl learns everything about how to be a well brought-up young lady, and peruse her dream to work in the flower shop. While My Fair Lady follows Pygmalion’s storyline, the film is a musical production that really livens up the story with its upbeat singing and dancing. George Cukor (1899-1983) was born in New York City and moved to Hollywood in 1929 to begin his career as a dialogue director. Cukor's first big hit was "Little Women" in 1933. He continued to direct films for over fifty years. In this time period, he directed another big success, My Fair Lady, which he won an Oscar award for in 1964. George Barnard Shaw (1856-1950) lived in Dublin, Ireland, before moving to London in 1876. Shaw wrote music and literature regularly, but struggled financially. In 1895 he began writing plays, creating over 60 scripts, including Pygmalion, directed...
Words: 1088 - Pages: 5
...My Fair Lady Film Analysis CHARACTERS: * Eliza Doolittle: A cockney flower girl from Lisson Grove working outside Covent Garden. Her potential to become “a lady” becomes the object of bet between Higgins and Pickering. * Henry Higgins: British, Upper Class professional bachelor who is a famous phonetics expert, teacher and author of “Higgins’ Universal Alphabet.” * Colonel Pickering, Higgins's friend and fellow phoneticist who is a retired Brisiths officer with colonial experience and the author of “Spoken Sanskrit”. * Alfred P. Doolittle: Eliza's father, an elderly but vigorous dustman. * Freddy Eynsford-Hill: Upper Class young man who becomes completely smitten with Eliza. * Mrs. Higgins: Higgins's socialite mother * Mrs. Pearce: Higgins's housekeeper * Zoltan Karpathy: Higgins's former student and rival SETTING: "My Fair Lady" is set in Edwardian London, sometime between 1901 and 1910, which is the period covering the reign of King Edward VII. The costumes in the 1964 movie version of "My Fair Lady," such as the peach colored outfit Eliza wears after the ball, when she meets her father on the way to his wedding, and the type of automobiles seen indicate the year 1912. This would be the time just before the start of World War I, during the reign of King George V - just after the end of the Edwardian era. PLOT: * Introduction: Higgins hears Eliza shouting in her harsh ‘Cockney’ accent in Covent Garden. He says to his new acquaintance...
Words: 1227 - Pages: 5
...Eliza Doolittle Eliza Doolittle is from the play “Pygmalion” who’s written by George Bernard Shaw. She is the main character in this play, and is known as a sassy, smart-mouthed flower girl with deplorable English. She is known for being an east-end girl who is very poor and is uneducated because she didn’t attend school. Although she is uneducated, this does not mean she is not smart, quick and clever. She uses her tactical thinking to pretend to whine and moan to make people believe or help her in different ways. She is very ambitious seeing as she will suffer lessons with the rude Mr. Higgins to become a flower shop girl. Eliza is shown to be an attractive person. She is around eighteen to twenty, hardly older. She wears a little sailor hat of black straw that is dirty from dust. Her hair needs washing badly. It has a mousy color and can hardly be natural. She wears a shoddy black coat that reaches nearly to her knees and is shaped to her waist. One of the styles she wore described was a brown skirt with a coarse apron. Her boots are much the worse for wear. She’s cleaner than what she can afford to be, but compared to the ladies she is very dirty. “Her features are no worse than theirs; but their condition leaves something to be desired; and she needs the services of a dentist,” as it’s described in Act 1. She is described as a lady with a cockney accent and awful dress sense. Eliza Doolittle is very poor and did not attend school. Although she is uneducated...
Words: 624 - Pages: 3
...Pygmalion originates from the Greek mythology of a king of Cyprus. The king falls in love with an ivory sculpture of his own creation. Captivated by the beauty of his sculpture, he pleads to the Greek gods to give him a wife as much like the sculpture as possible. The gods bring the sculpted woman to life. In the theatrical version of Pygmalion, scriptwriter George Bernard attempts to prove the concept that “the way one person treats another can, for better or worse, be transforming” (Livingston, 5). In the article “Pygmalion in Management” author J. Sterling Livingston uses Barnard’s fairy tale and the Pygmalion effect, as a metaphor for his power of expectation arguments Livingston engages in various aspects of the Pygmalion effect in management by researching several different experiments related directly to the effect. The first experiment Livingston discusses is an experiment that took place by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The manager of this company assigned his best six insurance agents to his best assistant manager, assigned six average agents to an average manager, and six below-average agents to a below-average assistant manager. He requested that the best agents and manager produce two-thirds of the premium volume reached by the agency during the previous year. As the manager predicted, the members of the superior group fulfilled their expectations and as expected, the below-average group’s productivity declined. The average group however produced...
Words: 253 - Pages: 2
...Pygmalion Taking place in early twentieth century London, the play begins with the social class divide and turns into a tale of a poor young woman, Eliza, wishing to better herself so she could move up in life. Sounds like a typical fairy tale beginning right? Not quite. A bet is made and Eliza is turned into a new project for Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics. The play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw was a comical drama, held at the Stagehouse Theatre. Social class, vanity, transformation, and even regretful wishes plague the characters of Pygmalion. The setting of Pygmalion was simple and brought the audience right up into the play. Walking down the stairs from the entrance the audience is given the feeling of walking into a different world. Darkness and music welcome us in and the dim stage lights allow us to navigate to our seats. The lights go out and we are surrounded in total darkness and begin to hear the sound of rain as the characters walk into an apparent street scene. Sitting the in the front row I was close enough to reach out and touch Eliza, even smell her if the stench of the dirty flower girl had been real. This allowed me to become captivated and entranced by the scenes set before me. A large stone wall with a massive wooden door is their backdrop. The second act takes place an apartment, clearly a bachelor’s pad, as there is nothing to indicate a woman’s touch. A few chairs, couches and tables indicate a sitting room and their elegant...
Words: 1553 - Pages: 7
...Motivating High Performance with High Expectations Aim high The Pygmalion Effect helps you think about how your expectations of other people can influence or motivate their performance. It argues that by setting and communicating high performance expectations, you can motivate better performance from the people you lead and manage. The effect was originally studied in context of teachers' expectations of their students: Students who are expected to perform well usually do so. Those students of whom teachers have lower expectations will generally perform less well. However, this approach has clear application in the corporate world. This effect is named after George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion", which is the basis of the film and stage musical "My Fair Lady". Shaw summarizes the effect by character Professor Higgins' observation that: ...the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. Understanding the Theory As a manager or supervisor, your aim is to get the best performance from the people who work from you. If you have high expectations of a member of your team, this can reinforce your efforts.On the other hand, if you convey lower expectations of an individual, this can undermine your efforts to improve his or her performance. Without knowing it, you may show low expectations by delegating less challenging and interesting work. You may pay less attention to team members' performance and give them less support and praise...
Words: 342 - Pages: 2
...Pygmalion Shaw, George Bernard Published: 1913 Categorie(s): Fiction, Drama Source: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3825 1 About Shaw: George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright. Although Shaw's first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, his talent was for drama, and he authored more than 60 plays. Nearly all of his writings deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege and found them all defective. He was most angered by the exploitation of the working class, and most of his writings censure that abuse. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal political rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthful lifestyles. Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a fellow Fabian, whom he survived. They settled in Ayot St. Lawrence in a house now called Shaw's Corner. Shaw died there, aged 94, from chronic problems exacerbated by injuries he incurred by falling. He is the only person to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). These were for his contributions to literature and for his...
Words: 34278 - Pages: 138
...English Essay Pygmalion Grade 9 The Transformation of Eliza Transformation is a thorough change a person’s form of life or their appearance. In the play ‘‘Pygmalion’’ by Bernard Shaw he shows this by the transformation of Eliza. After professor Higgins corrects Eliza’s speech Eliza gains independence; in her marriage; she can now marry a middle class man, her choice of job; she does not need to be a flower girl anymore she can open her own flower shop and she gains confidence as she works her way up to the upper class. After the transformation Eliza is not in the upper class but she is in the middle class thus making her marriage life more attractable to men in the middle class that she would had never attracted before when she was in lower class such as Freddy. Before Eliza was a flower girl she couldn’t attract upper class men. The men would abuse her when she was a flower girl. Now since Eliza moved upped a class because of her speech Freddy is starting to fall in love with her: “ Oh,no,no darling: how can you imagine such a thing? You are the loveliest, dearest’’(Shaw, 82). This quote proves that Eliza is attracting middle class men such as Freddy who thinks Eliza is the most loveliest girl. With Eliza moving up a class she will now dress more flatteringly and the men of the upper or middle class will start to take notice: “They stop talking to look at her...
Words: 817 - Pages: 4
