Bob Rosenthal's Famous Rat Study

Most people would agree that beliefs are powerful. However, many people don’t know that our beliefs and expectations can impact our reality and the reality of others. They can even help the blind see. Which may mean that believing really is seeing. The amazing story of how our expectations shape people’s lives, as well as the research done on this topic, is presented by the hosts of the Invisibilia radio show on an episode entitled “How to Become Batman”. The first bit of this episode begins by discussing Bob Rosenthal’s famous rat study. In this study, participants are told that their rats are either “smart” or “dumb”. Then, after interacting with the rat, they have them run a maze. Interestingly, the rats that were labeled, and treated, as “smart” performed better. This effect has also been found in the classroom, where teacher’s expectations of students translates into IQ scores. Next, enters the Batman, otherwise known as Daniel Kish. Daniel Kish has been blind since he was less than a year old, but has lived a normal life with the aid of self-taught echolocation, hence the nickname “Batman”. While the public may see his accomplishments as superhuman, he is frustrated with the amazement. He believes that we place low expectations on blind people which, subsequently, holds them back from their full
This is something that I have heard and learned about as a phenomenon called the self-fulfilling prophecy, which I found out is based on Bob Rosenthal’s work. While I know about the power of expectations, I had never really thought about it in relation to the blind. In the society we grow up in, we don’t expect people we label as “blind” to be able to function as normal human beings. My own prejudice about blind individuals was thrown right in my face. While I dealt with this cognitive dissonance, I began to think about