The Pygmalion effect is psychology refers to a situation where the high expectations of a supervisor or teacher

translate into improved performance by subordinates or students. It is a case of the self$-$fulfilling prophecy.

The following experiment was conducted to determine if the Pygmalion effect was occurring in a military

situation. Ten companies of soldiers in an army training camp were selected for the study. Nine of the

companies had three platoons and one had two platoons. Each platoon has its own platoon leader. Using a

random mechanism, one of the platoons was selected to be the Pygmalion platoon. The randomization was

conducted separately for each company. Prior to assuming command of their platoons, each leader met with

an army psychologist. For all of the Pygmalion platoon leaders the psychologists described a nonexistent

battery of tests that had predicted superior performance for his or her platoon. At the conclusion of basic

training, soldiers took a battery of tests. The Practical Specialty Test evaluated soldiers on their ability to

operate weapons and answer questions about their use. The average scores on the Practical Specialty Test

for the soldiers in the different platoons is in the following table. The purpose of this experiment is to find out if

the Practical Specialty Test scores are different for the Pygmalion platoons than the control platoons