Pygmalion Effect - Student Rating of Teachers

Student Rating of Teachers

Feldman & Prohaska (1979) sought to discover if the pygmalion effect could occur in reverse. That is, if a student's expectation of their teacher could be transmitted to the teacher and influence their performance. In the first experiment of the study, subjects were told either positive or negative information about their teacher just before the teaching session occurred. The researchers measured how the students' expectations impacted the session by considering the scores students received on the written test that completed the session, by giving the students a survey related to teacher satisfaction, and by recording the "nonverbal behavior" of the students toward the teacher. The teacher, a cohort of the researchers, was experimentally blind to what the students thought about him/her. There were differences in all three measures based on a positive or negative expectation. Students with negative expectations "rated the lesson as being more difficult, less interesting, and less effective." Students with positive expectations scored 65.8% on the test, and those with a negative expectation scored lower, at 52.2%. In terms of nonverbal behavior, subjects leaned "forward more to good teachers than poor teachers." There was some evidence that students with a positive expectation had better eye contact with the teacher. In the second experiment of the study, Feldman and Prohaska sought to directly support the theory that "the teacher could ultimately be affected by the student's differential behavior due to expectation". In this experiment, subjects were asked to teach someone a simple lesson. The student—played by a cohort to the researchers—enacted either positive or negative nonverbal behaviors toward the subject during the teaching session. Results found that subjects who received positive nonverbal behaviors reported feeling happier and more competent than subjects whose student displayed negative non-verbal behaviors. Furthermore, outside judges who rated each subject's teaching performance found, overall, that teacher receiving positive non-verbal behaviors taught the lesson more effectively. Thus, the study found that a teacher's performance is indeed influenced by the expectations—and subsequent behavior of—their students.