Labels Alter Performance
Labels Alter Performance
“Once you label me, you negate me.”
—Søren Kierkegaard
Labels Alter Performance
In 1968, Jane Elliott, a third-grade teacher from Riceville, Iowa, conducted a now-famous classroom experiment to demonstrate the mechanics of racism. The exercise took place shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In order to help her students grasp the concept of discrimination, Miss Elliott divided her students into two groups based on eye color: blue eyes and brown eyes.
Elliott told the class that she had learned a "fact"—that blue-eyed people were smarter, cleaner, and generally better than those with brown eyes. Conversely, brown-eyed children were said to be lazy, less intelligent, and less trustworthy.
At first, some students laughed and joked or looked uneasy—unsure of how seriously to take this news—but the emotional shift was almost instantaneous. The blue-eyed children became arrogant, bossy, and unkind while the brown-eyed children grew quiet, withdrawn, and visibly less confident. They even began to perform worse on academic tasks like math flashcards.
On the second day, Elliott reversed the premise. She told the students she had been mistaken—brown-eyed people were actually superior. The results flipped accordingly. The same kids who had been dominant the day before were now subdued while the other kids became the bullies. Performance also flipped. It was an ethically controversial experiment, but also a powerful one. It showed just how quickly a change in perceived status or identity—and the emotions that come with it—can transform behavior and performance.
This story reveals a few key things. The first is in one’s tendency to change their behavior when perceiving themselves to be better than another group. This is a form of emotional protection. We are in the safe group if a different group is inferior. The second finding is the emotional effect imparted on others as a result of that behavior. Being perceived as lesser impacts our emotional state. Third is the actual impact that the emotional state has on performance. And fourth, is the powerful influence an authoritative figure possesses by making things up and changing the entire dynamic of a group of people to set them against each other.
This wasn’t a well-controlled experiment, of course, and many emotions were probably impacting this particular example. Some kids probably feared arguing with the teacher, some probably feared other kids if they didn’t play along, some probably enjoyed mocking others, and so on. It’s easy to see how this might create a form of chaos. But either way, emotions ruled the two days and created many changes in actions and capabilities. It may not engender too many questions as to why, but sometimes it’s worth noting the obvious: the emotions we impart on others due to our perceptions of them have a powerful influence causing them to fit our expectations. This effect, however, seems to reach even beyond our simple understanding.
Similar to Jane Elliott’s experiment, researchers Robert Rosenthal and Kermit L. Fode conducted a study in 1963 involving lab rats1. Unlike Elliott’s students, the rats weren’t told they were smart or dumb—but the students handling them were. To be clear, the students were told the rats were smart or dumb, not the students themselves.
Sixty rats were randomly distributed to twelve psychology students—five per student. Half of the students were told their rats were "maze-bright" and selectively bred for intelligence. The other half were told their rats were "maze-dull." In reality, all the rats were standard issue and indistinguishable in capability.
Over the course of five days, each rat was run through a maze ten times per day. As you might expect (or else why would I be telling the story?), the rats which were believed to be bright outperformed the ones believed to be dull—and not by a small margin. On average, the proclaimed bright rats completed their mazes at nearly twice the speed as the proclaimed dull ones.
What could have made the rats perform differently? No one actually knows. It is expected the students were handling their rats differently based upon the labels the rats had been arbitrarily given. Those who believed their rats were bright likely treated them with a tiny bit more care placing them gently into the maze. Those who believed theirs were dull may have lacked the gentle touch of appreciation. In such a way it’s believed their unconscious expectations subtly influenced how they treated them which in turn altered their capability. What they believed altered the results presumably based on subconscious micro changes in behavior.
For a second insight, consider the rats more fully. Despite having no concept of the arbitrary labels or any comparative ability to know they were being treated as lesser, they responded and performed in line with the expectations. Perhaps they felt the stress or ease of their handlers and internalized it. The "dull" rats weren't treated cruelly, but they could have picked up on the subtle negative… something… and underperformed as a result. Or, perhaps the other rats were boosted by the warmth of positive emotions and exceeded performance expectations as they felt the gentle glow of care.
Whatever the reason, this Pygmalion Effect as they call it, has curious implications. Small beliefs, subtle emotions, and unconscious behaviors can produce major changes—even in creatures with little to no reasoning ability or concept of how they are perceived by others. While we can’t know for sure what made the rats perform based on expectation, it likely follows similar logic to what was observed in a subsequent study.
In 1968, Rosenthal and Jacobson performed another study with students2 where teachers were informed that a random few students were “intellectual bloomers.” As expected, those students outperformed the others. The teachers themselves were seen providing more emotional warmth, encouragement, and more availability for questions and feedback to the bloomers—all because of labels and expectations which caused the increase in performance.
So what about us? How often do we hide what we’re feeling verbally day to day only to leak it non-verbally? Either our emotions and beliefs have their own radiance fields, or our smiles, our posture, our eye contact, and other behaviors of emotion carry subtext that even rats can pick up on. Whatever it is, others do pick up on our perceptions of them whether we intend them to or not. If rats can, humans definitely do, and how we are perceived by others affects our performance.
The Pygmalion Effect demonstrates the power we have through our expectations. Our expectations are largely directed by our mood and the interpretations we attribute to our experiences based upon them. If my mood makes me think my children are dumb and useless, they’ll feel it and often become it. If I show them warmth and joy with positive expectations, they will flourish. The latter is hard to do if not in a good mood.
We also find that our own performance is highly dependent on the Pygmalion Effect. Anyone who has attempted a challenging workout routine knows full well how much our own emotional engagement plays a part in our success. Athletes must train their mental game just as much as their physical game. It is often our minds that quit long before our bodies.
A study published in 20143 took recreational runners and had them run to exhaustion on treadmills. They were then split into two groups. One group was trained for two weeks in self-talk. They’d learn to think positive thoughts like, “Keep pushing,” or “You’ve got this.” The other group was not. After those two weeks, they once again performed the running to exhaustion exercise. Those who learned self-talk increased their time to exhaustion by about 18% while the other group had no significant improvement at all. They learned to curate a mood for themselves and it greatly enhanced their capability.
Other studies have created similar results with deception. If an athlete is lied to that the end of the race is near, they will push themselves a little harder with a positive outlook that it’s almost over. They’ll think, “I’ve got this! I have enough energy reserves; let’s do this!” By the time they realize the deception, they really are near the end and they keep up the extra effort with the same gusto. In such studies, they improve their time by 5-15%. Moods and perceptions have great power in modifying our own abilities as well as those of others.