If someone is thought of as bright in my class, and they get work they don't understand a word of, they will try to because people think they can do it. Everyone else doesn't look at it too seriously because they aren't expected by other people to know the answers. They've actually admitted that if more people tried it they would feel more pressure to work at it and would try.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_e...

Also, Last semester I took a CP Biology class, and my teacher expected alot from us, so I studied and made sure everything was neat. This semester my CP Bio teacher doesn't put that much of an emphasis on learning class material. The class is alot more lenient, and so I don't study for tests or write neatly because I don't have to.

When I'm expected to do the bare minimum, I do the bare minimum, or less.

When I'm expected to do my best, I usually try very hard.

With one group, the experimenter gave them a questionnaire that stressed their Asian identity.
For another group, he gave them a questionnaire that stressed their female identity.
The last group just received a random questionnaire that had nothing to do with identity, period.

As you might expect, the girls who had their Asian identity stressed did the best, and the group whose female identity was stressed did the worst. The third group fell in between, as I recall.