There is power in belief. Robert Schuller said, “ I am not who I think I am not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am.” (You might want to read that twice.) Right or wrong, we define ourselves through other people’s eyes. Tell me enough times that I’m stupid, and I’ll believe you. Tell me enough time that I’m bright, and I might agree. Or as the German poet Goethe stated, “Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.”
Robert Rosenthal demostrated this in a famous classroom study. He and an elementary-school principal tested a group of students. They then mentioned to the student’s teachers that some of the kids had done extremely well on the tests. The teachers were led to believe that five or six of the students had exceptional learning ability.
What the teachers did not know was that the names of the “exceptional” students had been chosen entirely at random. They were no different from the others, but since the teachers thought they were, the teachers treated them differently. By the end of the year the ones the teachers thought were brighter actually were! They scored ahead of their peers and gained as much as fifteen to twenty-seven IQ points. The teachers described the students as happier, more curious, more affectionate than the average, and having a better chance of success later in life. This was all due to the attitude of the teachers! The teachers thought the students were special, and the students lived up to their treatment. Rosenthal wrote:
The explanation probably lies in the subtle interaction between teachers and pupils; tone of voice, facial expressions, touch and posture may be the means of which – often unwittingly – teachers communicate their expectations to their pupils. Such communication may help a child by changing his perception of himself.
