Robert Rosenthal, a psychologist renowned as an expert in nonverbal communication, and in particular what he called the “self-fulfilling prophecies” in which subtle, often unconscious, gestures can influence behavior, died on Jan. 5 in Riverside, Calif. He was 90.
His daughter Ginny Rosenthal Mahasin said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was an aneurysm.
Widely considered one of the leading social psychologists of the 20th century, Dr. Rosenthal, who spent much of his career at Harvard, was best known for his work in the 1960s on what he called the Pygmalion effect — or, more technically, “interpersonal expectancy.”
…