Do you know the Golem effect? Do you know what it has to do with the Pygmalion effect or with self-fulfilling prophecy? And with stereotypes? How has this effect been studied?

If you want to find out the answer to these questions, and above all, if you are passionate about social psychology but also educational psychology… don’t hesitate to read the article to the end!

Golem Effect: What is it?

The Golem effect, also called the Negative Pygmalion effect, consists of a phenomenon that we can frame within social psychology. This psychological phenomenon consists of the following: the fact of putting very low expectations on someone (or on oneself), leads to a worse performance of the person .

Why does this happen? How do you explain it? We will see it throughout the article and through a very clear example.

Before, but, to say that the Golem effect has been studied not only from the point of view of the social psychology, but also from the educational and organizational psychology. A little later we will talk about the first investigations that had as object of study the Golem effect, from the hand of Leonore Jacobson and Robert Rosenthal.

So, in other words, what happens in the Golem effect, is that a person can condition another person and make him believe that he is not capable of doing something , thus diminishing his self-esteem. This effect, however, often happens unconsciously. However, the consequences for the person who has been “prejudiced” can be very negative, because they would be limiting their potential.

To understand this phenomenon a little better, let us think of an example in the field of education.

Example

If a teacher emphasizes that a student is incapable of performing a series of tasks, or of passing his or her subject, it is very likely that this student will stagnate and this “negative prophecy” will actually be fulfilled.

Thus, in the Golem effect, the teachers’ expectations towards their students are based on little information and arise automatically ; these expectations often cause them to act in an indirect and unconscious way in a way that is consistent with the negative result; that is, their behaviour may be partly responsible for the negative result of their student.

This does not mean that teachers are responsible for the school failure of some of their students, far from it, but that their behaviour could influence this outcome because they already go with the previous expectation that they will fail.

This is the Golem effect, which can be extrapolated to other areas and situations beyond academia, for example when we have very low expectations of someone and these are met (at work, in personal relationships, etc.).

Its relationship to the Pygmalion effect and self-fulfilling prophecy

The Golem effect has much to do with two other phenomena in social psychology: self-fulfilling prophecy and the Pygmalion effect.

The Pygmalion effect consists of the exact opposite to the Golem effect, which is that placing high expectations on someone (specifically, on their performance), positively influences their performance, so that it improves. This is why the Golem effect is also called the Negative Pygmalion effect, because it consists of the opposite effect.

In this way, both the Pygmalion effect and the Golem effect, it is argued that our beliefs in relation to others, influence their performance. All this also has a lot to do with expectations, and from here we can link both phenomena directly to the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy.

The self-fulfilling prophecy refers to the fact that predicting or believing in something of a psychological nature facilitates its fulfillment , because we end up developing behaviors that facilitate it. That is, the fact of believing it ends up being the cause of its occurrence.

What does the research say?

As we have already seen through an example in the educational field, the Golem effect occurs in several areas of life, but especially in the academic field.

But who began to study the Golem effect, along with the Pygmalion effect and self-fulfilling prophecy? It was Leonore Jacobson, a school principal in San Francisco, California, and Robert Rosenthal, a psychologist, who began a series of investigations into these psychological phenomena.

Through their studies, Jacobson and Rosenthal observed that, unconsciously, many teachers classified their students ; this fact influenced their performance, since, also unconsciously, teachers facilitated or hindered the implementation of means and behaviors so that their initial “predictions” would be fulfilled.

Reflections on this phenomenon

As a result of analyzing the Golem effect, the following question may arise: can this effect be stopped? Although it is difficult, surely yes. How? Through the task of detecting these previous biases in people (for example in teachers) in relation to the abilities or possible performance of other people, or of students, in the case of teachers.

In other words, ideally, teachers should believe in all their students and encourage and stimulate their performance to the same extent (although there will always be students who need more attention).

So we are faced with a very complex issue, because in the end we all have expectations, we all have prejudices, we all make predictions based on certain parameters … and our behaviour, whether we like it or not, often goes according to those predictions, as if we unconsciously wanted to “be right” (even though precisely this behaviour is so irrational).

Relationship to stereotypes

At this point, and after talking about the Golem effect, its characteristics and differences with self-fulfilling prophecy and the Pygmalion Effect… it may be that a very important concept in social psychology has come to your mind: the phenomenon of stereotypes.

Stereotypes are those pre-established ideas or beliefs that we have in relation to a group or to certain types of people, for example. They are ideas that have been transmitted to us by society, school, family… and that we inherit in our mental imagination.

These ideas are often mistaken beliefs, because they attempt to define a group of people according to features “typically associated” with them, without any foundation. An example of a stereotype would be to think that “all Italians are Latin lovers”.

How does the Goleman effect relate to stereotypes? Basically, in a certain way stereotypes may be playing a causal role in this effect (although not always), since based on them we create ideas in our head regarding how a certain person’s performance will be.

On the other hand, as with stereotypes, when the Goleman effect occurs it is because we are creating an idea, or making a prediction, based on little information and almost automatically.

Bibliographic references:

  • Babad, E. Y., Inbar, J., & Rosenthal, R. (1982). Pygmalion, Galatea, and the Golem: Investigations of biased and unbiased teachers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(4), 459-474.
  • Castillo, R. (2014). The Pygmalion Effect: To what extent does the vision others have of us determine our future? End of Degree Project, Faculty of Economics and Business. Pontifical University.
  • Morales, J.F. (2007). Social psychology. Editorial: S.A. McGraw-Hill / Interamericana de España.
  • Rosenthal, R. & Jacobson, L.F. (1968). Teacher Expectations for the Disadvantaged. Scientific American, 218(4): 19-23.