Presentation Skills (Tip 7): Winning the Rat Race

In 1963, Robert Rosenthal and Kermit L. Fode supervised an animal study performed by students. They had participants undergo a unique experiment. The students were told they had to train rats to make it quickly through a maze.

Half of the students were told they had “maze-bright” rats that carefully were bred to be highly adept at completing mazes.  The other half were told they had “maze-dull” rats that had no training in completing mazes.

The students were given the same number of days to train the rats to complete the maze. After the allotted time, the “maze-bright” rats were able to complete their task twice as fast as the “maze-dull” rats.

However, …there was absolutely no difference between the two groups of rats! Both sets of students got randomly selected rats with no maze experience at all.

The rats were exactly the same, but the students who were led to believe they had smarter rats somehow helped the rats actually perform better.

This is called The Expectancy Effect and it’s incredibly powerful. So, here’s some big questions:

What is your expectancy of your presentations, how do you see yourself performing as a presenter? Do you see yourself as “presenter-bright” or are you working with a “presenter-dull”? Whichever one you pick, you’re right.

To be a confident presenter, you need to recognise that you are one. See yourself as one. Become one. Use the Expectancy Effect to your advantage. Use Positive Affirmations to get the message correct in the brain – then, and only then, can it transpire into reality.

What happened to the rats after the maze experiment? To be honest, I have no idea, but I do know that even if you win the rat race… you are still a rat.

So let’s be "presenter-bright". I can show you how easy it is, just visit my website for more details on how I can assist… you'll be amazed.

Kind regards

David Nottage

Torque Limited