Exam 16: Application Module 2 : Social Psychology and Educatio

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Rosenthal and Jacobson's famous experiment,"Pygmalion in the Classroom" (1968),found that students whose teachers were told they were expected to show substantial IQ growth over the course of the year did in fact show substantial gains in IQ,even though these students were selected at random,not based on actual ability.Efforts to replicate the original study have yielded mixed results.Jussim and Harber (2005)reviewed almost 400 studies conducted in the 35years since the original study and found that most replications showed smaller teacher expectation effects (e.g.,a change of three IQ points),and that these effects only occurred if expectations were manipulated early in the school year.The most rigorous test of the teacher expectations hypothesis is to manipulate expectations at random; otherwise,any correlation between teacher expectations and student performance could simply be due to accuracy on the teacher's part.The influence of teacher expectations is strongest among first and second graders,as well as among lower-achieving,lower-SES,and African-American students.

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People who hold an incremental theory of intelligence believe that intelligence is a malleable quality that can be improved with effort.In contrast,people who hold an entity theory of intelligence believe that intelligence is a fixed,predetermined "thing" that people have to one degree or another,and that there is not much they can do to change it.Incremental theorists attribute failure to lack of effort or the difficulty of the task and therefore work more toward goals that will increase their ability,even at the risk of exposing their ignorance.In contrast,entity theorists blame their failures on a lack of intellectual ability and therefore feel that there is little they can do to improve.Entity theorists are more likely to choose tasks that demonstrate their intellectual ability but which provide no opportunity to learn something new.Research suggests that incremental theorists show greater academic improvement over time,regardless of prior academic achievement.