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in effect define degree of talent by degree of success and then reinforce our feelings of causality by noting the correlation. That’s why although there is sometimes little difference in ability between a wildly successful person and one who is not as successful, there is usually a big difference in how they are viewed. Before Moonlighting, if you were told by the young bartender Bruce Willis that he hoped to become a film star, you would not have thought, gee, I sure am lucky to have this chance to chat one-on-one with a charismatic future celebrity, but rather you would have thought something more along the lines of yeah, well, for now just make sure not to overdo it on the vermouth. The day after the show became a hit, however, everyone suddenly viewed Bruce Willis as a star, a guy who has that something special it takes to capture viewers’ hearts and imagination.

The power of expectations was dramatically illustrated in a bold experiment conducted years ago by the psychologist David L. Rosenhan.20 In that study each of eight “pseudopatients” made an appointment at one of a variety of hospitals and then showed up at the admissions office complaining that they were hearing strange voices. The pseudopatients were a varied group: three psychologists, a psychiatrist, a pediatrician, a student, a painter, and a housewife. Other than alleging that single symptom and reporting false names and vocations, they all described their lives with complete honesty. Confident in the clockwork operation of our mental health system, some of the subjects later reported having feared that their obvious sanity would be immediately sniffed out, causing great embarrassment on their part. They needn’t have worried. All but one were admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The remaining patient was admitted with a diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis.

Upon admission, they all ceased simulating any symptoms of abnormality and reported that the voices were gone. Then, as previously instructed by Rosenhan, they waited for the staff to notice that they were not, in fact, insane. None of the staff noticed. Instead, the hospital workers interpreted the pseudopatients’ behavior through the lens of insanity. When one patient was observed writing in his diary, it was noted in the nursing record that “patient engages in writing behavior,” identifying the writing as a sign of mental illness. When another patient had an outburst while being mistreated by an attendant, the behavior was also assumed to be part of the patient’s pathology. Even the act of arriving at the cafeteria before it opened for lunch was seen as a symptom of insanity. Other patients, unimpressed by formal medical diagnoses, would regularly challenge the pseudopatients with comments like “You’re not crazy. You’re a journalist…you’re checking up on the hospital.” The pseudopatients’ doctors, however, wrote notes like “This white 39-year-old male…manifests a long history of considerable ambivalence in close relationships, which begins in early childhood. A warm relationship with his mother cools during adolescence. A distant relationship with his father is described as being very intense.”

The good news is that despite their suspicious habits of writing and showing up early for lunch, the pseudopatients were judged not to be a danger to themselves or others and released after an average stay of nineteen days. The hospitals never detected the ruse and, when later informed of what had gone on, denied that such a scenario could be possible.

If it is easy to fall victim to expectations, it is also easy to exploit them. That is why struggling people in Hollywood work hard to look as though they are not struggling, why doctors wear white coats and place all manner of certificates and degrees on their office walls, why used-car salesmen would rather repair blemishes on the outside of a car than sink money into engine work, and why teachers will, on average, give a higher grade to a homework assignment turned in by an “excellent” student than to identical work turned in