💃 Pygmalion Effect:
Believing in someone's potential can boost their results.
The Pygmalion effect, (often called the Rosenthal effect), is a psychological phenomenon whereby broadcasting expectations for someone else, alters their performance.
For example, being told that you're good at something, can actually create a better performance.
But in the same vein, signalling to the user that they're bad at something, may have the reverse effect.
✅ Effort & motivation
If you're told that you're the best football player on the team, and people are relying on you, you may be more motivated, and put in more effort.
Likewise, if you're told that you have the ability to quickly learn to use a tool, you may be more motivated to then commit to learning how to use it.
✅ Input quality
If the user is told that they're bad at something, then it can knock their confidence, and influence future results.
e.g., "you scored in the lowest 20% on Duolingo last month" could actually create a negative cycle, where your input quality was then worse as a result.
Encouraging users
Imagine that you're teaching a user how to use your product's dashboard. You want to avoid anything that'll negatively set expectations that it's hard.
Instead, proactively encourage them with positive reinforcement.
e.g., "You'll be a Built for Mars Pro in no time, it's easier than learning to use Microsoft Teams".
Reframing the 'loss'
If the user is performing badly, telling them their 'true' results may be seen as broadcasting the expectation that they can't do well in the task.
Duolingo offset this brilliantly, by reframing incorrect answers in a streak as "still learning".
It allows the user to have the perception that they're making progress, without giving the performance-altering evaluation that they're not doing well.
