WEBVTT - What's the Pygmalion Effect? 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:09.240 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.480 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:16.680 Chuck and Jerry's lingering too. She's a lurker and this 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:20.560 is Stuff you Should Know. The Education edition. 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:24.400 Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this after learning more about it. 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:26.640 Yeah, this is your pick. Where'd you come up with this? 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:28.000 I don't know. 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:32.200 Well, that's good. I was hoping that it wasn't like, well, 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:34.319 I had a really bad experience with a teacher when 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:34.920 I was a kid. 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:39.519 No, I had always good experiences generally. But now I'm 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.440 worried that it was a listener because I've gotten a 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:45.280 few of those lately. Like, hey, when you said you 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:49.559 didn't know it was me, I usually make a note, but. 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:53.000 Sure, sure, I don't know. Well, if you suggest to 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:56.200 the Pygmalion effect, you're probably the only one, and you 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:58.600 can feel free to email and be like, hey, sorry, 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.280 and you said you didn't know it was me. Yeah, 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:03.640 Well we're talking about the pig melion effect and it 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:05.840 does have to do with education, but it has to 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:09.000 do with you know more than that too. And for 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:11.640 those of you who don't know the pigmalion effect, is 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:16.360 a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. It's called an expectancy bias, 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.800 I believe, and it basically says, in effect that if 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:24.480 you have high expectations for say a student or an 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:29.759 employee or something, they're likely to perform better than other people. 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:33.160 And it has something to do in all sorts of 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:37.600 different ways. It turns out from that relationship, that high expectation, 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:40.680 and it's pretty neat if you think about it. And 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:47.400 the Pygmalion it's named after, I guess an ovid metamorphosis story. 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:51.480 Right, yeah, I think it was. I believe it was 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:53.480 a statue, isn't that right? 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.280 I think Pigmalion was the sculptor, and the statue is Galateea. 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:02.120 Okay, I knew it from you know, because I'm not 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:03.200 the art major. 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:05.320 Well i'm not either. 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.040 I was the English major. So I read George bn 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:12.320 Ard Charles's play pig Malion in college in a class. 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.240 And then, of course My Fair Lady was based on 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:20.120 pig Malion, in which I think her name was Liza Doolittle. 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:22.760 Sort of, Hey, let's take this rough around the edges 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:25.960 young woman and make her into a fair lady. 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.480 I knew it is trading places. 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.120 Exactly, but you know, sort of a classic story. 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.080 The original play is great, and it all has to do, 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:38.880 like you said, with this sort of self this idea 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.480 of the self fulfilling prophecy, which had been around for 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.200 a long long time, but in the nineteen sixties, of course, 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:49.840 when psychology and doing studies on all kinds of things 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:53.160 was really blossoming and just sort of exploding. 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:53.399 In all directions. 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:56.200 Super hip tho was well, I don't know about that, 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.959 but maybe in those communities. But there was a psychology 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:04.680 name Robert Rosenthal who got pretty interested in this idea 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:10.400 of how bias can affect something like performance or assumptions 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.200 or you know, thinking like you know, it moved out 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:16.560 of the classroom, but initially like hey, this kid has 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:18.560 promised or this kid does it, and then they end 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:19.320 up being like that. 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:23.040 Yeah, yeah, for sure. And there's a lot of implications 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:26.680 obviously of you know, okay, well, then does that mean 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.320 that there's kids who are not performing as well as 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:32.119 they could because they're not being treated well by their teachers? 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:34.560 Like sure, there's a lot And I think one of 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:37.720 the things that I like about this is that it 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:41.680 just how much debate and research and argument has gone 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:46.200 into just this one segment of approaching education really just 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:49.440 goes to show how seriously we take education, or have, 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:50.520 at least in the past. 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.520 Yeah, I think so. I mean that certainly doesn't mean 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.400 we figured it out, but no, I think people have 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:01.400 long studied and tried and argued and debated on the 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:04.120 best way to help kids reach their potential. 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:05.600 Then that's a good thing. Yeah. 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:08.200 So there was a sociologist named Robert Mertin, and he 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:10.000 turns out to have been the person who coined the 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:15.720 term self fulfilling prophecy. I hope he copyrighted it because 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:19.240 I owe him some money, just me. Anyway, that was 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:21.919 back in nineteen forty eight, and even by then that 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:26.760 was a good almost fifty years after experimental data started 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:31.800 coming in that showed fulfilling prophecies existed. So I guess 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.120 our kind of hero or at least protagonist antagonist? I 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:36.800 guess it depends on how you look at him. Robert 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.960 Rosenthal in the sixties he hit upon a pretty great 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.560 study idea along with a colleague of his name, Kermit Fode, 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:51.360 which is a great name in writing out loud, blinked 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:54.040 out in Morse code, it's a great name all across 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.599 the board. But working together back in nineteen sixty three, 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.000 they took on running rats through may which was already 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:03.719 like just so cliched back then that it was like 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:07.920 a perfect thing to experiment on, because it was like 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:11.200 the people that they were actually experimenting on, the students 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:13.640 who were running the research, were the ones who were 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.599 being experimented on. But the rats amazes was just so 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:19.600 ubiquitous they didn't question that at all. It didn't even 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.520 occur to them that they would be being experimented on. 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.120 Yeah, and they ended up coming up what I think 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.360 should be just these words on a T shirt and 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.240 just don't even explain it, because what they told experimenters 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.240 that we're working with these rats, they said, all right, 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:38.560 you got some really great rats in this group, and 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:42.279 they were bred to be maze bright, but those other ones, 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.560 they're maze dull, and I just think that would be 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.080 fun on a T shirt. But actually these rats were 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:52.520 assigned randomly. But what they found out was that the 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:55.920 dull rats, the Mays dull ones, hit their peak performance 0:05:57.160 --> 0:05:59.720 three days in and then started to go downhill where 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:03.600 these really bred to be Mayze bright rats just kept 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:07.120 on improving, and so the conclusion was, I think these 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:10.080 students are getting these rats that are Maze Bright and 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.080 are just you know, hey, little buddy, you can do it. 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:13.839 I know you got it. 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:16.920 Andy, Sure, you're a smart rat. Like they're handling them better, 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:19.599 they're talking them up, they're encouraging them, and it's working. 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:22.400 Yeah, because I mean again, you said that they were 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:25.440 assigned randomly and there was no such thing as Maze 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:27.800 Bright or Maze dol rats. They were all just the same. 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:30.720 So they had to have something to do with the 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.279 researchers because there was no difference between any of the 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:37.919 rats that were assigned. I think in the worst, the 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:42.600 worst interpretation is you could also suggest that the Maze 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:48.440 Bright rat student experimenters could could even have been fudging 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:51.360 the numbers a little bit to meet their expectations. Had 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:55.280 con but it's a possibility. And actually that kind of 0:06:55.360 --> 0:07:00.080 led to one kind of branch of study that that 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.719 came out of that, Mays Bright May's Dole rat experiment. 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:10.640 How much expectancy bias affects researchers in scientific studies. That 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.400 was the first leap that it went to, but shortly 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:18.240 after that it ended up in the classroom because a 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:22.320 principle of Spruce School and Elementary in San Francisco read 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:24.880 about this rat experiment. I think it was an American 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:30.400 scientist in nineteen sixty three, yesh, and the principal, Leonora Jacobson, 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:34.240 wrote to Robert Rosenthal and said, Hey, if you ever 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:39.200 want to replace like rats and experimenters with students and teachers, 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:43.400 I'm your person. And very quickly Rosenthal took Leonora Jacobson 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:43.920 up on that. 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.280 Yeah, by very quickly, I guess in science terms. A 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.160 couple of years later, right, and they said, all right, 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:52.880 you know, we don't know it now, but this is 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.320 going to end up being a very very famous experiment 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.920 called the Pygmillion experiment. And again you know, named for 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.680 or the art and the play and. 0:08:03.440 --> 0:08:04.080 What else was it? 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:06.240 Trading Places? 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:07.600 Trading Places? That's right. 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:09.920 I keep going to say forty eight hours, but that's 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:10.680 not it at all. 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:13.400 Yeah, but actually trade that came afterwards, so you know 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:18.440 what I mean? Sure, great movie, though, which one Trading Places? 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:18.920 I love it? 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.720 Okay, I've never seen forty eight hours? 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:24.400 Oh really, yeah, it's a good one. 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.760 Okay, So which one's better? Trading Places or forty eight Hours. 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:30.200 Well, I mean they're both kind of great. One is 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:33.200 just more of a straight up comedy, which is trading places. Sure, 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.040 forty eight hours was sort of in that cop buddy 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:41.360 movie action thing. Also has laughs, Yeah, for sure, but 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:42.640 you know it's prime Eddie Murphy. 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.760 Okay, that sound like more of a trading spaces person 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:46.040 to me. 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:52.000 Trading places, trading place, that's an HDTV show totally. 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.080 So boy, that was a good sidetrack. Eddie Murphy's got 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:57.720 a new Beverly Hills cop coming out, by the way. 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:00.640 Oh yeah, that's right. I wonder how that's going to be. 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:01.920 I wonder too. 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:04.840 I don't feel like he's aging poorly. He doesn't seem 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:06.920 to be getting less funny over time. Although I haven't 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.120 seen any of his stuff very recently. 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:14.480 We'll see I haven't either. I'm reserving my opinion untill 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:16.079 all right, that's fair, all right. 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:20.080 So Spruce School, San Francisco, it was performed on these kids, 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:25.319 white majority of Mexican American minority, but mostly working class kids. 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:27.560 This wasn't some like when I first heard Spruce School, 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:29.800 I thought it was some like Super heighty twenty Private. 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:32.000 Side I did too, sounds like it. 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:33.480 It sure it does, doesn't it, especially in San Francisco. 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:35.959 But one more thing, very crucially about this school. The 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:39.160 kids were grouped by reading ability. So if you weren't 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:40.920 a very good reader, you were in a group or 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.480 a class with other kids who weren't a very good reader, 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:44.600 and so on and so forth. 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:46.959 Yeah, and we're going to talk a lot about grouping 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:49.360 because it has a lot to It's not a great 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:50.720 thing to do, as it turns out, and it's got 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:52.360 a lot to do with a lot of this for sure. 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.600 So students at the school, they were given a test, 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.760 and the researchers told these teachers. And as we'll crucially 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.800 find out too, the test was not given by the researchers. 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:04.600 They were given by the teachers. Correct. 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.640 Yes, so that's going to come into play as well. 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:11.280 But they told the teachers, said, all right, we've got 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:16.480 these results. You've got some bloomers or quote unquote growth 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.760 spurters in your class, and they're probably just like these 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:22.800 maze bright rats. They were like the they're going to 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.560 really improve over the school year, just you watch. We 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:28.960 gave him this test. It was the Harvard's Test of 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:34.800 inflected acquisition, and it's supposed to assess their potential, which 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:37.000 was not true at all. What they actually took was 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:42.000 an IQ test called Toga Flanagan's Test of general ability, 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:45.920 and there were some problems with that right off the bat, 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:47.040 right with this Toga test. 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:50.079 So one thing chuck about that test of inflected acquisition. 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:53.320 It didn't exist. They just they made it up so 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.920 that teachers, if they were possibly familiar with the test 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:59.880 of general ability, they wouldn't be like, wait, this is 0:10:59.920 --> 0:11:02.040 isn't This isn't what you would use to find gross 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.439 burgers or bloomers. They just made up a test. Because 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:07.839 this was a made up the results were supposed to 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:11.600 be made up too. Again, the teachers thought that they 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.280 were administering a test and that the results were real world, 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:18.040 but they were being lied to. They're being manipulated in 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:21.040 the exact same way those students were told that some 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:24.400 of their rats were mays, brighter, maze dull. Exact same experiment, 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:25.240 just with humans. 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:25.480 Now. 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.240 Yeah, because the idea is to see if teachers think 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.719 that a kid is supposed to have a growth spurt intellectually, 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.160 then that will end up being the self fulfilling prophecy. 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:41.920 So these students were chosen at random. The teachers were 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.839 given that information, and after months and months, they took 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.040 this test again, the Toga test at the eight month mark, 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:51.560 the one year mark, in the two year mark. 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:56.319 Yeah, and so, just as Rosenthal predicted in his hypothesis, 0:11:56.400 --> 0:12:00.360 I should say Rosenthal and Jacobson, the principal the the 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:02.480 people who had been or the kids who had been 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:07.160 identified as growth spurners or bloomers actually did bloom academically. 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:11.440 They gained all sorts of IQ points over the course 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:13.400 of the eight months and then year and then two 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:16.960 years when they took and retook the tests. And that 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.160 even though the effects were mostly pronounced among first and 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:23.679 second graders, that was enough. That was enough to just 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:25.960 kind of show like this is a real deal. These 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.600 kids were no different than the other kids. The only 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:32.920 difference was that these bloomers were the ones whose teachers 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.000 were told keep an eye on them because they're going 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:36.319 to be amazing kids. 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:37.280 Yeah. 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:41.520 And what's interesting is for the uh, I think, the third, fifth, 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.800 and sixth graders, they showed that they actually improved at 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:47.920 the same rate the bloomers did the ones who were 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:51.160 assigned that tag at least at the same rate or 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.079 slightly even slower rate or lower rate did than the 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.840 control group, and the researchers. 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.080 Rosenthal basically said, well, that's because. 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:03.200 When you're younger, you're your mind is more malleable, and 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:07.559 so that that's probably it. And also because the school 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:12.040 and these teachers probably you know, think that their reputation 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:15.760 wasn't like they may have felt bad for these kids 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.600 who weren't who didn't get the bloomer tag, so they 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:21.960 may have like paid more attention to them or something. 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.079 Right, or the younger kids hadn't been at school long 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:27.800 enough to establish like, hey, I'm actually not that smart 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:31.559 or hey I'm actually really bright, so their their reputation 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:35.400 wasn't established. You know, no big man on campus label 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:36.560 had been applied yet. 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:39.480 Yeah, so if you're starting to sense like, oh wait 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.040 a minute, then he just immediately sort of explained away 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.280 something that didn't agree with his finding, you will see 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:47.440 that that kind of becomes part of the story. 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:47.880 Right. 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.199 So they published a study in nineteen sixty eight called 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.040 pig Malion in the Classroom, And again they named it 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:59.280 after Pigmalion because in that story from Ovid, the sculptor 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.520 Pigmalion sculpts a beautiful woman falls in love with her 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:07.520 and loves the statue so much that the goddess Venus says, 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:09.920 I'm going to make you a real live person. So 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:16.200 the attention that Pygmalion paid to Galatea his statue created 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:21.040 a magical transformation in his statue from statue to human. 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.680 There was some sort of magical intervention. So it actually 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.960 is a really great, great name. And I can't think 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:29.880 that that didn't have something to do with how much 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:33.320 it exploded onto the scene, because it's really difficult to 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:38.040 understate what just to bomb. This dropped not just in academia, 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:41.040 but in popular culture. It got picked up and talked 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:42.840 about four years afterward. 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:46.000 It sounds like a great place to break. 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.240 A I thought you might say that, all right, well, 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:50.200 let's take a break and we'll be right back and 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.240 talk about this explosion of understanding right after. 0:14:53.080 --> 0:15:14.400 This shot shot. 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:21.840 All right, So where we left off. The study was 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:25.840 called Pigmilion in the Classroom, published in sixty eight as 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:28.800 the paper and then also notably is a full book. 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:33.040 If it was just the paper, it may have just 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.080 sort of been, you know, passed around through academia. But 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:38.720 because it was a book, it became very popular, and 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:42.720 all of a sudden, Barbara Walters is interviewing Rosenthal, and 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.520 the New York Times has got it on the front page, 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:49.200 and you know, like the mainstream media is all over 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:52.280 this is you know, basically saying and you know, kind 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.320 of like the media does with something like this. They're 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:58.400 not digging into the data like academia will, as we'll see, 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:00.920 but they'll run big headline and they'll say this is 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:04.640 really significant because we all knew that the way we 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:07.160 teach our kids is wrong, and this kind of proves it. 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:10.200 Yeah, So I think that was another reason why it 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:13.520 had such a huge effect on like the larger culture, 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:16.760 because people have been suspecting for a while that putting 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:21.200 kids into groups by you know, reading ability was a 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:23.600 bad idea. It was doing a disservice to him. Now 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:28.560 there's this paper that showed demonstrably that that was absolutely true, 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.200 that was a terrible idea. And yeah, like you said, 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.760 there were headlines all over the place. People were discussing it, 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:40.160 and Rosenthal he was basically the ringleader, the ring master 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:43.840 to all this stuff. He was very much on board 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:47.000 with not pointing out, oh, actually, you guys are missing 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.400 a lot of nuance. It's not quite that cut and dry. 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.200 He was like, yep, absolutely, like exactly what you're saying, 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:55.000 this black and white thing, where like, yes, this is 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.320 absolute proof. I'm totally going to go along with that. 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:04.159 And he got criticized just for that alone, just not 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:09.800 intervening in how his science and findings was being communicated 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:11.879 to the larger public and in fact kind of playing 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:16.440 a role in making that happen, just kind of capitalizing 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:21.840 on the general populations. In comprehension of statistical analysis, we 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:23.919 don't know what that is or how to do it, 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.280 so we rely on scientists to explain it to us 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:31.640 in terms we can understand or the press, and if 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:36.400 the scientist, as we've covered many times Chuck isn't forthright 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:39.840 or honest, that stuff can get turned into all sorts 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:43.640 of misunderstandings or overblown findings. 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:44.320 Yeah. 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:45.800 And one of the big things too that we should 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:48.639 point out was that the fact that we told you 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:53.080 earlier that before the break, that these tests really kind 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:57.120 of showed this effect for these younger kids in first 0:17:57.160 --> 0:17:59.879 and second grade, but not for the you know, the 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:01.880 kids in the older grades, and in fact, it showed 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.959 a negative correlation sometimes in some of the older grades. 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:07.000 They didn't even put that in the book at all, 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:10.000 so they're already sort of cherry picking stuff. And the 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.439 book was the thing that really blew up more so 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:15.080 than the paper. Yeah, and so of course the press 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:18.200 isn't covering that aspect of it, probably because they didn't 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:18.919 even know about it. 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:21.320 Yeah. So there's two tracks. The popular press like the 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.040 New York Times or Today Show or whatever, they're covering 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:26.199 it in glowing terms like it's absolute proof of what 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:32.160 everybody always suspected. The other track was a pretty wide 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.720 river of criticism coming out of the halls of academia 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:40.439 from other psychologists of different stripes who just were teeing 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:44.679 off on this paper. And even though it didn't necessarily 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:49.719 capture the attention of the larger public in academia, there 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:53.800 was a thorough debate that started right after the paper 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:56.040 came out and went on for a good decade and 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.679 actually turned out to be really healthy, not just for 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:03.640 Rosenthal's paper, synhal and Jacobson's paper, but for I guess 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:09.040 statistical analysis as a whole. But I think because Rosenthal 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:14.359 ended up inadvertently creating the meta analysis study. But before 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:15.720 we get to that, took. Let's talk about some of 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:19.200 the stuff that was wrong with the paper statistically speaking. 0:19:19.720 --> 0:19:22.000 So yeah, I mean the Toga test we should talk 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:25.760 about right out of the gate, because this test was 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:29.719 not supposed to be used on first graders or with 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:34.520 kids with an IQ below sixty, and that alone probably 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:38.399 accounts for, or at least accounts for some of the 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:41.760 fact that these low results were coming in on these 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:44.920 kids in the younger grades, and then they would obviously 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:48.280 gain much more ground because they've then aged into the 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:50.760 test by their time, they're taking this when they're really 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:51.360 supposed to. 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:56.080 Be exactly and there was something that that was Rosenthal 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.320 like responded to that. It even said, hey, even if 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:03.080 that test does and apply to these younger kids, the 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:05.040 fact that the same kid is taking the same test 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:09.200 over time, it really it renders that moot. It's still 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:11.440 going to show accurate results. 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:15.160 I see what he's saying there, but it's just moot 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:17.080 to me because it wasn't even supposed to be given 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:17.640 to a kid that. 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.440 Young, right. But also, he's totally full of beans right there. 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:28.520 He's so the first initial findings that first test produced 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:32.160 such totally skewed results that as those kids aged into 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.720 the test and started getting normal results, and you compared 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.880 those those later results to the first results, you would 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:43.600 see all sorts of crazy gains that were completely incorrect, 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.480 like they just weren't true. That was a big part 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:48.320 of it. That Toga test was not set up for 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:51.240 kids with IQs under sixty, which is a big problem 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:54.720 because first graders in the United States on average had 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.040 IQs of fifty eight, and so you can see it 0:20:57.080 --> 0:20:59.520 reflected in some of those results, like some kid had 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:04.359 an IQ of eighteen. That's almost impossible and certainly they 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:07.600 wouldn't be like reading at that point. Same with the kid, 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:10.720 I think with thirty. And then one of those kids 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:13.960 later went from like thirty to like one hundred, which 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:18.320 is coming close to maybe even gifted level. Like the 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:21.359 results were just terrible and even worse than that. In 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:25.000 the book as an academic should they didn't include any 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:26.280 of the raw data either. 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.040 Yeah, so that means, you know, you can't go out 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:32.959 as another researcher and sort of try and replicate that. 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:35.480 It just kind of occurred to me what he was 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:39.440 sort of saying with that initial defense was like, you know, 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:42.159 you have a broken scale that doesn't say what your 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:44.720 true weight is, but you can still you know, it's 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:47.600 still accurate because you can see how much weight you 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:50.240 gain or lose by using that same scale, right, And 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:52.000 you're like, yeah, but you still don't know how much 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:52.880 somebody weighs. 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:56.120