ABSTRACT
Decisions are made, lectures given, tests evaluated, gossip exchanged, and all this in a climate of neglect for the individual personalities and response-abilities of what psychologist Kenneth Keniston calls “the faces in the lecture room.” Students who become victims of depersonalization may seek justification in depersonalizing teachers. Expectation can have positive or negative effects. Robert Rosenthal’s “Pygmalion Effect” is a startling example of both. Rosenthal developed a four-point explanation for the success of the high expectation students: their teachers provided a supportive and emotionally warm climate, specific and active feedback, more effort, and more encouragement of student responsiveness. Rosenthal found that regardless of actual measured abilities of children, teachers who are told the children in their classes are bright find those students being more successful in school than students of teachers who erroneously believe their students are below average in intelligence.
