Don’t Kid Yourself: Beware of the Chameleon Effect
You know what’s amazing? It’s the ability we all have to change our environment based upon our view of it. I’m not talking about any mysticism or hocus pocus, but a proven psychological ability that we as human beings have. It’s called the “Chameleon Effect”, also known as the “Pygmalion Effect” or the Rosenthal effect (after the researcher Robert Rosenthal who first studied it), it deals with our natural sense of value attribution and how it affects our lives. People tend to superimpose or imbue things with certain qualities or characteristics based on how they initially perceive them. Our initial impression of something or someone will lead us to view it in a way consistent with that impression.
On a crowded subway platform in Washington D.C., Joshua Bell (a Grammy Award-winning violinist who plays to sold-out crowds in symphonies around the world) pulled out his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin during morning rush hour, and
