Golem effect

The Golem effect is a psychological phenomenon in which lower expectations placed upon individuals either by supervisors or the individual themselves lead to poorer performance by the individual. This effect is mostly seen and studied in educational and organizational environments. It is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy.

The effect is named after the golem, a clay creature that was given life by Rabbi Loew of Prague in Jewish mythology. According to the legend, the golem was originally created to protect the Jews of Prague; however, over time, the golem grew more and more corrupt to the point of spiraling violently out of control and had to be destroyed. The effect was named after the golem legend in 1982 by Babad, Inbar, and Rosenthal because it "represent[s] the concerns of social scientists and educators, which are focused on the negative effects of self-fulfilling prophecies".

The Golem effect has very similar underlying principles to its theoretical counterpart, the Pygmalion effect. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson's Pygmalion in the Classroom and further experiments have shown that expectations of supervisors or teachers affect the performance of their subordinates or students. The most thoroughly studied situations of this effect are classrooms. When arbitrarily informed that a particular student is "bright" or "dull", not only will the supervisor's behavior change to favor the "bright" students (as indicated by more praise or attention), the students themselves will exhibit behaviors in line with their labels (such as the "bright" students leaning more forward in their chairs relative to the "dull" students). While the Pygmalion effect and the majority of studies focus on the positive side of this phenomenon, the Golem effect is the negative corollary. Supervisors with negative expectations will produce behaviors that impair the performance of their subordinates while the subordinates themselves produce negative behaviors. This mechanism is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the idea that self-held beliefs can come true in reality. When both supervisor and subordinate notice the low performance, the negative expectations are confirmed and the belief is reinforced.

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