Coaches Choice: The Pygmalion Effect or the Galatea Effect?

Interesting concepts for coaches or anyone that is involved in motivating a team or a group trying to achieve a common goal. Once again from The Talent Code.

from The Talent Code:
How Great Teachers See « The Talent Code:

Talent identification is the holy grail of sports, business, parenting, and education. We dream of having the magical ability to quickly and accurately assess who is destined to succeed; to sort the contenders from the pretenders.

Funny thing is, there was once a clever scientist who figured out how to do just that.

His name was Dov Eden; he was an Israeli psychologist who worked with businesses and the military. In the early 1980s Eden published a remarkable study that showed he could predict with uncanny precision which young recruits in the Israeli military would become top performers.

It worked like this: Eden studied the mental and physical aptitudes of one thousand recruits, then selected a handful of soldiers he labeled as “high potential.” Eden informed platoon commanders that they could “expect unusual achievements” from these individuals.

Sure enough, Eden was right. Over the next 11 weeks, Eden’s group performed significantly better than their peers — 9 percent higher on expertise tests and 10 percent higher on weapons evaluation.

It looked for all the world like an impressive display of talent identification — except that it wasn’t.

Because here’s the twist: the “high-potential” soldiers weren’t really high-potential. Eden had selected them completely at random. The real power was in the act of labeling them as high-potential. In sending a simple signal — these people are special.

That signal had created a massive effect in both the mind of the instructor and the learner — a virtuous spiral between teacher and learner that led to the full expression of potential. (The phenomenon, dubbed the Pygmalion Effect, has been repeated many times, and is particularly powerful in educational settings.)

'via Blog this'

I wonder if there are significant gender differences regarding which methodology is more effective. Anecdotally, I would say that the type of motivational cues that I hear coming from 3rd base coaching boxes in softball ( from women coaches) is more of the "We believe, you believe...." type versus baseball which is more "You have to believe in yourself..."

Perhaps I could be wrong there or over-generalizing but it seems to make sense that males and females would take different approaches to achieve a result. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Difference Between Galatea Effect and Pygmalion Effect

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/difference-between-galatea-effect-and-pygmalion-effect.html

The Galatea and Pygmalion effects are the two most important self-fulfilling prophecy theories. However, there lies a fundamental difference between them. The article to come will explain the subtle differences.

The Galatea and Pygmalion effects are two important management theories based on the power of expectations. The fundamental difference between the two theories is that the Galatea effect is based on an individual's expectations about himself, whereas the Pygmalion effect is based on the premise of people's expectations of others.

In Greek mythology, the name "Galatea" is lent to a statue that is carved of ivory by Pygmalion of Cyprus. Also, Polyphemus' object of desire in Theocritus' Idylls VI and XI is named Galatea, and again it has been associated with him in the myth of Acis and Galatea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Though there is an association of the name with Pygmalion’s statue, the connection sprang with a post-classical writer.

Galatea Effect

The Galatea effect is a phenomenon where people's own opinions about their ability and self-worth influence their performance. The Galatea effect is self-driven. It is that part of one's motivation that depends on self-expectations and self-worth. If an employee thinks that he can perform well, chances are that he will do well. If, in that situation, he receives positive encouragement from his superiors, it will only boost his confidence and will do wonders to his performance.

Pygmalion Effect

The Pygmalion, or Rosenthal effect refers to the phenomenon in which the higher the expectations placed on people -- often students, employees, children etc., the better is their execution of work. The Pygmalion effect is a form of self-fulfilling divination. It argues that by setting higher expectations for people (who come under a leader), the leader can motivate them to perform better. It was originally studied in context with a teacher's expectations of students. It was observed that the students, who were expected to do well did perform well, while the ones who weren't expected to perform well, did not.

As is told in Greek mythology, the effect gets its name after Pygmalion, a Cypriot sculptor, who fell in love with a female statue that was carved by him. This effect, as applied to the corporate world, was first described by J. Sterling Livingston in an article in the Harvard Business Review in 1988. "The way managers treat their subordinates is subtly influenced by what they expect of them," -- said Livingston in his article. One can summarize the Pygmalion effect as follows:

⇨ Every manager, or supervisor has certain expectations for his subordinates.
⇨ They convey their expectations to them consciously and unconsciously.
⇨ The subordinates get the message of what is expected of them.
⇨ They strive to perform and live up to the expectations of their manager.

The way managers treat their subordinates influences their performance. If a negative feedback is passed on to them, their performance may actually falter. Positive Pygmalion effects have a far-reaching effect on the employees. When managers put faith in the abilities of their subordinates, their morale and self-esteem increases, and hence, their performance gets better.

Galatea Effect Vs. Pygmalion Effect

Both the effects play an important role in increasing the productivity and personal development of each individual.

⇨ The primary difference between the Pygmalion and the Galatea effects is that the Pygmalion effect is based on the expectations of others while the Galatea effect is rooted in self-expectation.

⇨ In the Pygmalion effect, subordinates work towards meeting the expectations that are set by their superiors, whether or not these expectations are verbally or non-verbally expressed. In the Galatea effect, on the other hand, an individual sets expectations for himself or herself and strives to live up to it. In short, the Galatea effect is more powerful than the Pygmalion effect.

Most preferably, people should be driven by their faith in their abilities (the Galatea effect), but the Pygamlion effect is, in its own way, a useful ally in motivating people to give their best. It may not appeal to everyone, but can be considered while coaching or leading people.

By Jyoti Babel
Published: June 7, 2013
Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/difference-between-galatea-effect-and-pygmalion-effect.html

Your Big Doubts About the 10,000 Hour Rule Are Well-Founded | Library of Economics and Liberty

Great stuff on the Nature versus Nurture debate, the Ten Thousand Hour Rule and more from what may seem like an unlikely source, the Library of Economics and Liberty. BTW this site and this article demonstrates my theory that you can judge a site by the quality of the comments in the comments section and this site is top notch, top quality and first class all the way. Therefore, it is appropriately bookmarked and highly recommended.


Your Big Doubts About the 10,000 Hour Rule Are Well-Founded | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

				Your Big Doubts About the 10,000 Hour Rule Are Well-F... Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer's
				View on econlog.econlib.org	Preview by Yahoo

Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer's "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance" (PSYCHOLOGICAL Review 1993) isn't just one of the most famous articles in the history of academic PSYCHOLOGY.  Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, the article's bullet points are now famous around the globe.  It is from this article and related RESEARCH the Gladwell distills his "10,000 Hour Rule."

What does the 10,000 Hour Rule really say?  A few caveats aside, the Rule says that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is both necessary and sufficient for world-class expertise.  Listen, for example, to Gladwell talk about musical expertise.

The striking thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals," musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any "grinds," people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn't have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top MUSIC SCHOOL, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

This may seem like journalistic hyperbole, but it's quite close to the original RESEARCH.  Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer:

Contrary to the popular "talent" view that asserts that differences in practice and experience cannot account for differences in expert performance, we have shown that the amount of a specific type of activity (deliberate practice) is consistently correlated with a wide range of performance including expert-level performance, when appropriate developmental differences (age) are controlled. Because of the high costs to the individuals and their environments of engaging in high levels of deliberate practice and the overlap in characteristics of deliberate practice and other known effective training situations, one can infer that high levels of deliberate practice arenecessary to attain expert level performance. Our theoretical framework can also provide a sufficient account of the major facts about the NATURE and scarcity of exceptional performance. [emphasis mine]

And:

We attribute the dramatic differences in performance between experts and amateurs-novices to similarly large differences in the recorded amounts of deliberate practice. Furthermore, we can account for stable individual differences in performance among individuals actively involved in deliberate practice with reference to the monotonic relation between accumulated amount of deliberate practice and current level of performance.

Although I've found great value in Ericsson's research, his skepticism about innate talent always struck me as crazy.  Yes, experts energetically hone their crafts.  But everywhere I look, I see Gladwell's "naturals" - people who are good despite relatively little time investment - and "grinds" - people who are mediocre despite massive time investment.  Only recently, though, did I discover a pile of researchthat confirms my big doubts about the 10,000 Hour Rule.  Highlights of the highlights:

More than 20 years ago, researchers proposed that individual differences in performance in such domains as music, sports, and games largely reflect individual differences in amount of deliberate practice, which was defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a domain. This view is a frequent topic of popular science writing--but is IT SUPPORTED by empirical evidence? To answer this question, we conducted a meta-analysis covering all major domains in which deliberate practice has been investigated. We found that deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued.

The case of chess:

On average, deliberate practice explained 34% of the reliable variance in chess performance, leaving 66% unexplained and potentially explainable by other factors. We conclude that deliberate practice is not sufficient to account for individual differences in chess performance. The implication of this conclusion is that some people require much less deliberate practice than other people to reach an elite level of performance in chess. We illustrate this point in Fig. 2 using Gobet and Campitelli's (2007) chess SAMPLE, with the 90 players classified based on their chess ratings as "master" (≥2200, n = 16), "expert" (≥2000, n = 31), or "intermediate" (<2000, n = 43). There were large differences in mean amount of deliberate practice across the skill groups: master M = 10,530 h (SD = 7414), expert M = 5673 h (SD = 4654), and intermediate M = 3179 h (SD = 4615). However, as the SDs suggest, there were very large ranges of deliberate practice within skill groups. For example, the range for the masters was 832 to 24,284 h--a difference of nearly three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, there was overlap in distributions between skill groups. For example, of the 16 masters, 31.3% (n = 5) had less deliberate practice than the mean of the expert group, one skill level down, and 12.5% (n = 2) had less deliberate practice than the mean of the intermediate group, two skill levels down. In the other direction, of the 31 intermediates, 25.8% (n = 8) had more deliberate practice than the mean of the expert group, one skill level up, and 12.9% (n = 4) had more deliberate practice than the mean of the master group, two skill levels up.

The figure:

The case of music:

On average across studies, deliberate practice explained about 30% of the reliable variance in music performance, leaving about 70% unexplained and potentially explainable by other factors. We conclude that deliberate practice is not sufficient to account for individual differences in music performance. Results of other studies provide further support for this conclusion. Simonton (1991) found a large amount of variability in the amount of time it took famous classical composers to have their first "hit," and that the interval between the first composition and the first hit correlated significantly and negatively with maximum annual output, lifetime productivity, and posthumous reputation. Composers who rose to fame quickly-the most "talented"-had the most successful careers. Furthermore, Sloboda, Davidson, Howe, and Moore (1996) noted that although students at a selective MUSIC SCHOOL ("high achievers") had accumulated more "formal practice" than students who were learning an instrument at a non-music school ("pleasure players"), there were some individuals at each skill level (grade) who did "less than 20 per cent of the mean amount of practice for that grade" and others who did "over four times as much practice than average to attain a given grade" (p. 301).

If deliberate practice doesn't explain everything, what does?  Lots of stuff.  Starting age.  IQ. PERSONALITY.  Specific cognitive skills, too.  Consider working memory:

Ericsson and colleagues have argued that measures of working memory capacity themselves reflect acquired skills (Ericsson & Delaney, 1999; Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995), but working memory capacity and deliberate practice correlated near zero in this STUDY (r = .003). There was also no evidence for a Deliberate Practice × Working Memory Capacity interaction, indicating that working memory capacity was no less important a predictor of performance for pianists with thousands of hours of deliberate practice than it was for beginners.  

Fortunately, we can salvage most of the original RESEARCH behind the 10,000 Hour Rule.  Instead of thinking of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice as a mandatory minimum for expertise, take it as a rule of thumb: On average, a world-class expert has to practice for about 10,000 hours to reach the top.  Instead of thinking of 10,000 hours as a guarantee of expertise, adopt a pluralistic and probabilistic approach: 10,000 hours combined with lots of innate talent will usuallytake you to the top.

Most importantly, though, think of deliberate practice as a general THEORY ofimprovement, not a special THEORY of expertise!  Some people learn more much easily than others.  But almost anyone can improve in almost anything.  How?  By deliberately practicing the specific skills they wish to improve.  RESEARCH on deliberate practice doesn't undermine intelligence research by showing that genius is a myth.  Instead it reinforces Transfer of Learning research by showing that learning is highly specific.

HT: GMU econ prodigy Nathaniel Bechhofer

---

Science aid: Nature versus Nurture

				Science aid: Nature versus Nurture Is intelligence caused by nature (genetics) or nurture (how you are raised/the environment)? Look at twin, adoption and selective breeding studies to com...
				View on www.scienceaid.co.uk	Preview by Yahoo

Nature versus Nurture

In this article we will be exploring the age-old nature or nurture debate: which is more relevant; your genes or how you are bought up. This particular article will be concerned with inteligence.

Evolution and Genetics

Firstly, what is evolution? It is a process where the creatures that are best adapted to survive will live longer and therefore be able to reproduce more and have a greater number of offspring. Many of these offspring will have this characteristic and over the course of many generations all in that species will have this characteristic.

It can be defined briefly as: a gradual change in a species over time because of a natural selection of the best adapted to an environment.

Now we move on to a simple look at genetics. As you know, we have genes which give us different characteristics and these genes are inherited from our parents. The actualgenetic code is known as the genotype. However, you get one gene from each parent for everything, but obviously only one of these can be expressed; so how the genes actaully manifest themselves is called the phenotype.

Twin Studies

A twin study is one of the method used. There are two types of twin: dizygotic (DZ) who are regular fraternal twins; and then monozygotic (MZ) which are identical twins and so have exactly the same DNA as each other, i.e. the genotypes are identical. The table below summarizes what the various findings would mean.

In particular it is useful to look at MZ twins (since there genetics are the same) who have been raised together or apart. This was done by Shields (1962), and found the correlation between inteligences of MZ growing up together was 0.83 and growing up apart was 0.51. This would appear to show the environment is more important, however there are some methodological issues related to this study.

A correlation shows how two things are related, but don't give a definite reason. Also, it is only recently that we can prove two twins are identical, it could be that DZ twins that looked very similar were included because they thought they were identical. And finally there is the issue of what was counted as 'seperated' in the study, some twins were included who were raised but different family members but lived near to each other, regually saw each other and went to the same school.

............

Conclusion

Very sorry to dissappoint you, but the conclusion is that both nature and nurture play an important role, however perhaps that the environment is the deciding factor.

The idea used to describe it is the Rubber Band Hypothesis. It says that the potential (length of the band) is decided by genetics. However the environment stretches this band, so that someone with a low potential could be stretched beyond someone with a high because of environmental differences. However if someone with a high and someone with a lower genetic potential had the same environment, that person with the higher genetic potential would be able to 'stretch' their intelligence to a higher level.

What Young Athletes need besides 10,000 Hours of Practice

10,000 Hours Of Practice May Not Be Enough | Axon Sports

			10,000 Hours Of Practice May Not Be Enough | Axon Sports The 10,000 hour theory has become the American dream for developing athletes. Just work hard enough and your gold medal, Hall of Fame, championshi...
			View on www.axonpotential.com	Preview by Yahoo

The average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity. -- Robert Brault

The 10,000 hour theory has become the American dream for developing athletes.  Just work hard enough and your gold medal, Hall of Fame, championship ambitions can come true.  It is achievable, measurable and finite. However, many athletes never quite cross the 10,000 hour finish line, and have used the scapegoat reason, "I just didn't have enough time to commit to the sport."  Now, recent research suggests that while 10,000 hours of deliberate practice may be necessary to achieve world-class status, it may not be the only ingredient to success. (10,000 hour theory was not wrong, just over-simplified) Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, a research paper by Florida State professor K. Anders Ericsson, The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, has been cited in the scientific press over one thousand times earning its own HOF credentials.  The gist of it is that Ericsson visited a West Berlin music academy and interviewed violin students and their teachers.  First, he asked the students to estimate the number of structured practice hours they had endured up to age 20.  Then, he asked their teachers to divide the class into good, better and best thirds.  The correlation uncovered showed that the best students had accumulated, on average, over 10,000 hours of practice while the middle group was at about 8,000 hours and the bottom group had not reached 5,000 hours. After checking this relationship within other groups of skilled experts, Ericsson found similar patterns of 10,000 hours of practice and concluded that innate talent or "what we're born with" had little to do with becoming an expert in any field, even sports.  With that declaration, the dream (and the practice odometer) was launched. However, since that landmark 1993 paper, other researchers have been finding exceptions to the rule; some experts were crowned with only 3,000 hours of practice while others still had not reached the mountaintop even though they had doubled the 10,000 hour mark. David Hambrick, associate professor of psychology at Michigan State, has been searching for the other necessary ingredients for several years.  In 2011, he and his colleague Elizabeth J. Meinz found that deliberate practice among pianists did account for almost half of the variance between experts and novices.  But in their quest to find out what else mattered to make up the other 50% of variance, they found that working memory capacity, the ability to remember a set of objects while engaged in another task, was also a significant determinant of success. This month, Hambrick and his team released new research that looked at 14 different studies of chess and music students to find other clues to expertise.  Again, they were convinced that deliberate practice alone was not enough. "The evidence is quite clear," he writes, "that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice." It's not just any old "practice" , but deliberate practice that makes the difference. Smart teachers adjust the old saying "practice makes perfect" into "practice makes permanent" or "perfect practice makes perfect." Indeed, practicing a skill wrong will make a person better at doing it wrong.  Practice must be designed with quality in mind, as opposed to quantity. Two great repetitions will cause an improvement; 102 bad repetitions will not. --- Across those chess and music studies, they found that practice explained about one third of the journey to being world class.   --- One new factor that did emerge was starting at a young age.  Logically, someone who started training at age 7 versus 12 would have five more years of practice, but Hambrick found that even when total hours of practice were comparable, the student that started at an earlier age became more accomplished.  "This evidence suggests that there may be a critical period for acquiring complex skills just as there may be for acquiring language," he concluded. --- Overall intelligence did make a difference, at least for these chess and music students.  Those students with a higher tested IQ, including working memory capacity, were also more likely to end up being experts. --- Finally, grit, a determined attitude to succeed, also played a role in creating success.  The term has been made famous by Paul Tough in his book How Children Succeed, based on the research of psychologist Angela Duckworth (see TED talk below).  The desire and passion to get better drives the willingness to spend so many hours practicing a skill. So, what does all of this mean for the aspiring superstar?  -- That practice, as much as possible, is still a necessary evil to getting better at a sport.  However, it also confirms that different athletes have different qualities and progress through their journey at different paces.  -- They may need some guidance based on their individual strengths that will help them find the right sport. "If people are given an accurate assessment of their abilities and the likelihood of achieving certain goals given those abilities," Hambrick predicted, "they may gravitate toward domains in which they have a realistic chance of becoming an expert through deliberate practice."

10,000 Hours vs. The Sports Gene - MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

I wish I could have attended this event. I'm not sure I had the requisite IQ to get in the door, but this breakout features a comparison of the recent book The Sports Gene by David Epstein (highly recommended) versus the arguments presented in The Talent Code. 

Once again, much like the Moneyball debate of "stats vs. scouts"  I think the nature vs. nurture, genetics vs. hard work is a false argument. It's not one or the other, but an elegant interplay of both sides of the argument. Enjoy. 

10,000 Hours vs. The Sports Gene | MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

			10,000 Hours vs. The Sports Gene | MIT Sloan Sports Anal... Annual conference on sports analytics organized by the MIT Sloan School of Management.
			View on www.sloansportscon...	Preview by Yahoo

Many impactful innovations in sport and beyond were created by visionaries that dared to think differently. Finding a new and radical way of approaching a traditional task – one that may even run counter to conventional wisdom – is risky but potentially "game changing" too. This panel will bring together the pioneers who have found success by challenging the status quo in their field. The discussion will focus on questions such as: What seeded the initial idea for change? Who inspired them? How did they overcome obstacles and gain buy-in to their vision? Once established, how does one continue to innovate in the face of new imitators? And, what is the next great opportunity for innovation? 

David Epstein - The Sports Gene