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Category: Project

Description: School and classroom culture, and the expectations they convey, are thought to be important determinants of student outcomes. However, it is difficult to separate the causal effects of these traits from other determinants. In this study we seek to do so by building off of an extensive literature going at least back to Rosenthal and Jacobsen's "Pygmalion" experiment (1968), which examined how the expectations of others (e.g., teachers) and of one's self influence performance. A largely separate literature dating back to influential research by Tversky and Kahneman (1974) has drawn attention to humans' frequent use of heuristics and the presence of biases in their judgment. In particular, an established finding in this literature is that an initial point of reference (i.e., an anchor) can influence subsequent choices. This study seeks to establish whether a performance anchor influences students’ self-expectation as well as their actual performance, to provide insight into how signals of high or low expectations on student performance are internalized and impact classroom achievement.