Page 109 - Getting to the Heart of High Performance

the supposed gifted group was significantly higher than
that of the “normal” group. This pattern of results, known

as the “Rosenthal effect”, has been found repeatedly
through research in schools and other organizations.

In fact, Rosenthal and Fode produced similar results in
research they conducted with animals. 13 The students
were told they would be doing experiments with a new
strain of super-intelligent rats that could run mazes
quickly. Rosenthal then gave everyone perfectly normal

rats. Half the students were told they had the new
“maze-bright” animals, while the other half believed
they were working with “maze-dull” rats. Students
working with the so-called bright rats noticed daily

improvements in maze running, with their animals run-
ning the maze faster and more accurately than the
other group. Students who thought they were working
with dull rats found that their animals refused to

budge from the starting line 29 percent of the time,
while the supposedly bright rats refused only 11 per-
cent of the time.

The Power of Positive Expectations 93