Lenore F Jacobson was principal of an elementary school in the South

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Unified School District in 1963 when she started a correspondence with

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

psychologist Robert Rosenthal which led to the influential

Pygmalion Effect The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area. The effect is named for the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell so much in love with the p ...

study. Jacobson, who had earned an MA at

California State University, Sacramento California State University, Sacramento (CSUS, Sacramento State, or informally Sac State) is a public university in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1947 as Sacramento State College, it is the eleventh oldest school in the 23-campus California ...

in 1951, wrote to Rosenthal after he published a paper in

American Scientist __NOTOC__ ''American Scientist'' (informally abbreviated ''AmSci'') is an American bimonthly science and technology magazine published since 1913 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. In the beginning of 2000s the headquarters was in New ...

about the effect of researchers' expectations on their subjects in psychological experiments. In the article he mentioned the possibility that a similar

self-fulfilling prophecy A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's or group of persons' belief or expectation that said prediction would come true. This suggests that people's beliefs influence their actions. ...

might be at work between teachers and students. After they had started to correspond, Jacobson offered Rosenthal her assistance and they agreed to collaborate on a study at her school. The experimental design for this research was finalised when Rosenthal went to San Francisco to meet Jacobson for the first time in 1964. They published their findings in ''Psychological Reports'', 1966, vol. 19. This led to the publication of '' Pygmalion in the Classroom'' in 1968. Seven years later Jacobson and Paul M. Insel published ''What do you expect?: An inquiry into self-fulfilling prophecies'' (California 1975).

Sources

*Robert Rosenthal, ''The Pygmalion Effect and its Mediating Mechanisms'' in ''Improving Academic Achievement: Impact of Psychological Factors on Education'' ed. Joshua Aronson (2002) Year of birth missing (living people) Living people People from South San Francisco, California California State University, Sacramento alumni {{US-edu-bio-stub