The Big Idea
I
n 1963, a pair of research-
ers named Robert
Rosenthal and Kermit
Fode assigned a dozen
psychology students an
experiment: Train rats
to solve their way out of
a maze. Rosenthal and
Fode told half the students that
they would be training “maze
bright” rats, selectively bred for
their exceptional maze-running
prowess, and the other half that
demonstrates a principle of
social psychology that has been
confirmed by thousands of
studies since: that an experi-
menter’s bias can unconsciously
influence the performance of
their subjects through what are
known as “expectancy effects.”
Here, the students’ beliefs about
their rats dictated how they
behaved with them, driving the
ones they saw as extra-capable
toward success, and uncon-
they had on their hands “maze
dull” ones, bred for the opposite
trait. Five days in, the “maze
bright” rats could complete
their task twice as fast as the
competing group, which is what
you might expect when you pit
uber-rats against dimwits.
But here’s the thing: All the
rats in the study were, in truth,
pretty much the same.
What happened in Rosen-
thal and Fode’s experiment
sciously guaranteeing that the
ones they expected to be inferior
would fail.
Research into expectancy
effects over the past several
decades has shown that the prin-
ciple holds true outside labora-
tory settings, too, and has broad
implications for how managers
can improve—or damage—the
performance of their employees,
simply through the power of
their own beliefs. In short, what
Great Expectations
The trick to creating superstar employees? Think of them as superstar employees. by ELIZABETH DUNN
22 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / January-February 2018 Illustration / VIKTOR KOEN