From the age-old tradition of superstition, to the more recently mainstream act of manifesting. The idea of ‘luck’, or being able to change your own fate, has received criticism for its apparent illogical nature. However, such phenomenon may have more grounding than is widely assumed; The Pygmalion Effect serves to provide psychological evidence for the truth behind these attempts to improve lifestyle. The Pygmalion Effect may be defined as a self-fulfilling prophecy; in short, a prediction or expectation that ultimately becomes true due to the alteration of behaviours and environmental factors in a response to the prediction. The theory originates from Ovid’s metamorphosis in which the character (Pygmalion), sculpts a statue from his image of ideal beauty. His belief in the potential beauty of the statue resulted in the actualised beauty of the woman; thus, his high expectation results in the creation of his ideal expectation.
As a self-fulfilling prophecy, the Pygmalion effect was investigated in 1968 by Rosenthal’s psychological experiment within a classroom context, investigating the effect high expectations had on students’ grades. The results showed that students whose teachers had greater expectations of, shown through positive feedback on their work, achieved greater results and those with negative expectations attributed to them consequently performed negatively, inversely named The Golem Effect. In his discussion, Rosenthal suggested that the results may be attributed to attitude, of both student and teacher. The difference in attitude resulted in a difference of (self) perception, environment, and work drive.
Delving into perception, a main contributing factor that influences perception, in the case of expectations, is the idea of confirmation bias. This is the concept of only recognising the behaviour or events that match the previously set expectations and unknowingly not registering what does not fit within this expectation. For instance, this may occur through subconsciously searching for ‘lucky’ events throughout the day, that would have occurred regardless, but to the individual becomes attributed to the lucky event, leading to a seemingly improved state, that meets expectations.
Therefore, an assumption of greater success, of any sort, in an individual has the potential to lead to an improved mental state due to improved self-esteem, that leads to greater capacity for success. Secondly, greater expectations are desirable for the individual, causing greater motivation and lead to a desire for repetition which increases the maintenance of this expectation. Changes in behaviour may occur because the individual wishes to meet the expectations, set by themselves or others, and so a subconscious increase in effort generally follows due to the pressure of the expectation.
To provide further explanation, high or low expectations from both external and internal sources have the potential to change the environment. This may be mostly attributed to an increase in opportunities with access dependent on the expected nature of the individual. This encompasses opportunities that are only able to be accessed by those who are assumed to be more successful. For example, offering extra learning activities for students that are seen as more intelligent, which excels the already intelligent students forward and decreases opportunities for those who are not perceived in the same manner, maintaining the structures. Thus, it is important that the assumption of an individual’s ability does not contribute to their accessibility, regardless of context. Although this factor relies more on external expectations, the internalised expectations of a person also factor in. This is seen through in circumstances in which a person is likely to engage with, or accept, a challenge, including placing themselves into better environments because of the high expectations they have of themselves. For example, if a person feels more confident, due to manifesting that day or saluting a magpie (a common superstition), they may open themselves up to more opportunities, that they wouldn’t engage with had their self-perception been lower, that places them in a better chance of opportunities or success.
Certainly, this is not mere coincidence, nor magic, but rather a logical combination of how an expectation has the ability to shape environments, (self) perception and, ultimately, results.
Therefore, it is also possible to purposely manufacture these effects, as a self-help tool, through a change in mindset, whether that be manifestation, superstition or setting greater goals more generally, so long as the expectation is an improved state with greater belief in self-ability. For instance, manifesting greater academic rigour and unknowingly working harder alongside this in order to complete the self-fulfilling prophecy, or perceiving a day as better due to setting the expectation that it will be a good day.‘Lucky’ superstitions may indeed have some science behind it, if the luck leads to a person assuming a certain event will be more successful and subconsciously adapts their behaviour to ensure this occurs, as well as the confirmation bias of only allowing the positive elements of their day, that they can attribute to the lucky event, to resonate with them. Regardless of whether it is an improved state, or just perceived to be is irrelevant as it still leads to a person feeling as if it is an improved state. Of course, this often results in an increase of happiness too. So, finding-a-penny-and-picking-it-up, may actually mean that all day long you’ll have good luck (as long as the penny-finding leads to expectations of the day being increased)