Galatea Effect: do you believe in your possibilities?

The way we think about ourselves directly affects our success or failure.

"This kid is dumb", "you'll never amount to anything", "you can't do it". These phrases clearly reflect a negative expectation of the person to whom they refer. And not only that, but whether they are expressed or not, a series of actions will probably be carried out that will make the subject introject that idea and end up behaving in the expected way.

This is known as the Pygmalion effect. But there is also an effect related to the same situation, although from a different point of view: we are talking about the Galatea effect..

The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea

To better understand how the Pygmalion effect and the Galatea effect work, it may be helpful to look at where these terms come from, their history being linked to mythology.

The myth of Pygmalion presents him as the king of Cyprus, who throughout his life had been searching for the perfect woman to become his wife. However, he could not find anyone. The king decided to devote his time to sculpture, an art in which he excelled. He decided to represent the perfect woman in one of his works, creating an ivory statue of such perfection that he ended up falling in love with her.. He called her Galatea and spent a long time admiring her. But the statue was still just that.

Pygmalion attended various religious celebrations and begged the gods to give her life, and Aphrodite, goddess of love and passion, answered his pleas. Upon returning home Pygmalion spent a long time staring sadly at Galatea, finally kissing her. But surprisingly he found that the touch was warm. With a second kiss, Galatea came to life, in turn falling in love with Pygmalion.

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The Pygmalion effect

Throughout the myth, we can observe how Pygmalion's desires and expectations caused him to perform a series of actions that in turn would lead to those desires and expectations coming true..

From the same myth has been extrapolated what is called the Pygmalion effect, according to which the expectations we project on others will cause us to do actions that will eventually generate that type of behavior in the person in question. For example, if we think a child is not going to amount to anything and we unconsciously project on that idea, in the long run it is more likely that the child will believe the same and end up fulfilling the behavior and role expected of him.

The Pygmalion effect is well known in the world of psychology and education, and can have a great effect on the child.The Pygmalion effect is well known in the world of psychology and education, and what others expect of them can have a great effect on individuals. But just as others' expectations have an effect, so do one's own. Thus we can observe the existence of another important complementary effect to this one. It is the Galatea effect.

The Galatea Effect

The Galatea effect refers to the power of belief in one's own capabilities and possibilities or lack thereof to and possibilities or the lack of them when it comes to achieving success or not in our objectives.

If a person feels confident and capable of achieving what he/she desires, he/she will have a much higher probability of achieving his/her goals since their behavior will be more oriented and focused on them.. The subject will tend to rely more on his or her own effort and will feel much more committed to achieving the goals.

On the contrary, someone who feels incapable of achieving what he wants, who lacks confidence, will not dare to go all out for his objectives. He will tend to doubt, to visualize possible mistakes and failures and his commitment to it will be more fragile, so it will be more likely that he will not achieve what was his goal.

Its relationship with the perception of others

The Galatea effect does not only have an internal connotation. Our self-perception and self-confidence is projected outwardly through our attitudes and behaviors, so that others will pick up on them and form their own perception. an image of us based on them, among other things..

The image they form will be more positive or negative depending on what they can pick up on, and that image will influence how they treat us. For example, if they see us as weak, they may be more likely to take advantage of us or protect us, while if we project a more assertive image, they may admire or envy us. Also in the expectations that others form of us.

In the same way, the perception that others have of us and what they transmit to us will affect us, modifying to a certain degree our self-perception. to a certain degree, modifying our self-perception and thus our way of acting, which in turn means that the Galatea effect and the Pygmalion effect are closely related.

However, what is more important in predicting our success or failure is the predicting our success or failure is what we think of ourselves and our chances of succeeding, since a person can succeed even if his environment does not believe in it, while someone who does not believe in himself will have a much more difficult time even if his whole environment supports him.

Link with locus of control

The Galatea effect is also related to the locus of control, understood as the link that we establish between what happens and what we do, i.e. to the attribution of events to one's own performance or to other factors such as luck..

A person who believes that his successes are due to internal, stable and global factors will perform much more active and goal-directed behaviors, while someone who thinks that they are due to external, unstable and particular factors may consider that his triumphs are not such but mere chance and therefore lose the motivation to strive for his goals.