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The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl and always will, but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady and always will.
Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion
It is an interesting psychological phenomenon that people tend to fulfil the expectations that other people have of them. This phenomenon is known as the Pygmalion effect or the self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea that one person's expectations can influence the behaviour of another has been in existence for a long time. The original Pygmalion was a prince of Cyprus in Greek mythology who carved an ivory statue of the ideal woman. This statue was so perfect that he fell in love with it, and called his ideal woman Galatea. Aphrodite (the Goddess of Love) came to his rescue, and she brought the statue to life.
This interesting love story from mythology inspired the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw to write the play Pygmalion which was the basis for the musical hit My Fair Lady. The underlying theme was that one person, by effort and belief, can change another. Professor Henry Higgins, through his expectations and hard work, changed Eliza Doolittle from an ill-mannered loud flower girl into a soft-spoken sophisticated lady.
In 1965 Look magazine in the United States contained an article entitled "Sweeney's miracle." The article refers to a story at the Tulane Biomedical Computer Centre in New Orleans, Louisiana which at the time was headed by James W. Sweeney. According to the article Sweeney said "I am going to make a poorly educated Negro into a computer expert." Racial segregation was almost a way of life in the southern United States at the time. The poorly educated black Sweeney chose was a hospital porter named George Johnson. Johnson then worked as a janitor in the computer centre in the mornings and learned about computers in the afternoons. He was treated as a computer person and according to Sweeney he became "just about the best trainee we ever ran through the place". Johnson was eventually put...