What should be understood by the concept of Pygmalion effect?

Typically, behind every young person passionate about knowledge is a teacher, a father, or a mother who, when the first questions arose, always offered nourishment, affection, and encouragement. Parents and teachers resonated with their children and students; and parents and teachers who believed in their children and students, generating what Terrassier (1994 and 2002) beautifully called a positive Pygmalion Effect.

After extensively studying children with very high intellectual abilities, French psychologist Jean Terrassier formulated the theory of the Pygmalion Effect in the 1980s. Terrassier found that children and young people did not respond specifically to their abilities, but rather to the expectations that the adults around them had of them. This means that a child or young person tends to respond to the expectations they believe their parents and teachers have of them. If their teachers believe their student can go very far, they will go very far, and if their parents believe their child will not go very far, then they will not go very far.

If a child frequently hears that they are not believed in, that they don't see significant potential for development, that their abilities are mistrusted, or that little is expected of them, then little will be given. But the opposite can also happen: parents and teachers see great potential, talents, and a promising future in the child. In this case, the child will experience a Positive Pygmalion Effect, which will drive them to grow and meet the expectations their parents have of them.

Having followed more than a thousand children with very high analytical intelligences in Colombia for nearly two decades, we conclude that behind every young person with very high abilities and interests, we have always been able to find parents and teachers who generated a Positive Pygmalion Effect during childhood.

Paradoxically, in school, we spend a lot of time talking about children with problems and the problems children present. As absurd as it may seem, teachers tend to spend much more time talking about children with problems and children's problems than about their abilities, skills, talents, and potential.

As educators of artists and athletes have long known, we must focus on strengths to develop them. However, in education, we generally do the opposite. As Drucker (1990) points out, schools almost always tend to focus on students' weaknesses, when Plutarch explained twenty centuries ago in his Paideia (Child-Raising) that the essential thing in education was to focus on children's aptitudes and talents, so that they can excel in what they already know how to do well.

The Pygmalion Effect theory formulated by Terrassier invites us to set challenges that are within children's range of potential development, to believe in them, in their potential and possibilities, because only then will they go far. Children and young people know how to read our expectations, and depending on what they read, they will act accordingly. Parents and teachers can generate a positive or negative Pygmalion Effect in every dialogue, in every gesture, and in every communication with them. We know for a fact that most of the time, and in most children, teachers, and parents, we have generated a Negative Pygmalion Effect.

To understand this, it is necessary to keep in mind that appropriate expectations from parents and teachers will encourage children to respond to them with greater dedication. Robert Sternberg (1999) also recognizes the role these expectations play when, in a publication published a few years ago, he stated:

Considering the weight of teachers' and parents' expectations on children's development, it is especially worrying that, according to a sample of 6,400 Colombian children, one in ten feels hated and rejected by their teachers. This means that at least 10 percent of students experience, clearly and directly, a negative Pygmalion effect in the educational institutions where they attend (Sarmiento and Daza, in De Zubiría et al., 2003). Similarly, in the United States, students with very high IQs feel very little motivation during 60 percent of their time in the classroom during the last two years of elementary school (Feldhusen and Sud Un Kin, 2000).