Robert Rosenthal (psychologist)

Robert Rosenthal ( born March 2, 1933, Gießen) is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside.

Life

Rosenthal fled with his parents at the age of six years from Germany to the USA. In 1956 he received his doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles. He began his career at the University of North Dakota, where he worked in the field of clinical psychology. Later he moved to Social Psychology. For many years he worked at the prestigious Harvard University, where he became in 1992 the chair of the psychology department. After retiring in 1999 he went back to California and has since worked at the University of California, Riverside.

His experiment became famous a self-fulfilling prophecy, which he completed in 1965 on U.S. elementary schools. First, he convinced with a dummy test which the College that certain randomly selected by him pupils, highly intelligent " bloomers " were that would show in the future excellence. In an intelligence measurement at end of school year, most of these students had actually improved greatly compared to their acquired at the beginning of the school year intelligence level (45 percent of the selected as a " flyer " or " bloomers " children were able to increase their IQ by 20 points or more and 20 percent could even increase it by 30 or more points). This was named after him Rosenthal effect many times has since been replicated. For this purpose, however, Rost ( 2009, p 262): " ... the alleged variety of studies on intelligence support through simple expectations effects ... does not exist".

His current work dealt with the non-verbal communication, particularly with their influence on the expectations, for example, in a doctor -patient or employer-employee situation.