Rosenthal and Fode’s Rat Experiment

Many years ago, Robert Rosenthal and Kermit Fode (1963) had students teach rats to run a maze. Half of the students were told that their rats had been bred to be “maze bright,” and half were told that their rats had been bred to be “maze dull.” In reality, there were no genetic differences between the two groups of rats, yet the supposedly brainy rats actually did learn the maze more quickly, apparently because of the way the students handled and treated them. If an experimenter’s expectations can affect a rodent’s behavior, reasoned Rosenthal and Fode, surely they can affect a human participant’s behavior as well, and he and others went on to demonstrate this point in many other studies.