The Influence of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The self-concept is such a powerful force on the personality that it not only determines how you see yourself in the present but also can actually influence your future behavior and that of others. Such occurrences come about through a phenomenon called the self-fulfilling prophecy.

A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when a person’s expectations of an event make the event more likely to occur than would otherwise have been true. Self-fulfilling prophecies occur all the time, although you might never have given them that label. For example, think of some instances you may have known.

• You expected to become nervous and botch a job interview and later did so.
• You anticipated having a good (or terrible) time at a social affair and found your expectations being met.
• A teacher or boss explained a new task to you, saying that you probably wouldn’t do well at first. You did not do well.
• A friend described someone you were about to meet, saying that you wouldn’t like the person. The prediction turned out to be correct—you didn’t like the new acquaintance.

In each of these cases, there is a good chance that the event occurred because it was predicted to occur. You needn’t have botched the interview, the party might have been boring only because you helped make it so, you might have done better on the job if your boss hadn’t spoken up, and you might have liked the new acquaintance if your friend hadn’t given you preconceptions. In other words, what helped each event occur was the expectation of it.

Types of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

There are two types of self-fulfilling prophecies. Self-imposed prophecies occur when your own expectations influence your behavior. In sports you’ve probably “psyched” yourself into playing either better or worse than usual, so that the only explanation for your unusual performance was your attitude. Similarly, you’ve probably faced an audience at one time or another with a fearful attitude and forgotten your remarks, not because you were unprepared, but because you said to yourself, “I know I’ll blow it.”

Research has demonstrated the power of self-imposed prophecies. In one study, people who considered themselves incompetent proved less likely to pursue rewarding relationships with others. Compared to their more confident peers, they were also more likely to sabotage existing relationships. On the other hand, students who perceived themselves as capable achieved more academically. In another study, subjects who were sensitive to social rejection tended to expect rejection, perceive it where it might not have existed, and act as if it had occurred even when it did not. Such a response strains relationships and can result in exactly what the sensitive person was trying to avoid—rejection. Research also suggests that communicators who feel anxious about giving speeches seem to create self-fulfilling prophecies about doing poorly that cause them to perform less effectively. The self-fulfilling prophecy also operates on the job. For instance, salespeople who view themselves as being effective communicators are more successful than those who view themselves as less effective, despite the fact that there was no difference in the approach that members of each group used with customers. In other words, the apparent reason why some salespeople are successful is that they expect to succeed.

Self-imposed prophecies operate in many ways that affect everyday communication. You’ve had the experience of waking up in an irritable mood and saying to yourself, “This will be a bad day.” After you made such a decision, you may have acted in ways that made it come true. If you approached a class expecting to be bored, you most probably did lose interest, owing partly to a lack of attention on your part. If you avoided the company of others because you expected they had nothing to offer, your expectations would have been confirmed—nothing exciting or new did happen to you. However, if you approached the same day with the idea that it could be a good one, this expectation probably would have been met also. Researchers have found that putting a smile on your face, even if you’re not in a good mood, can lead to a more positive disposition. Likewise, if you approach a class determined to learn something, you probably will—even if it’s how not to instruct students! Approach many strangers with the idea that some of them will be good to know, and you’ll most likely make some new friends. In these cases and ones like them, your attitude has a great deal to do with how you see yourself and how others will see you.

A second category of self-fulfilling prophecies is imposed by one person on another, so that the expectations of one person govern another’s actions. The classic example was demonstrated by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson in a study they described in their book Pygmalion in the Classroom. The experimenters randomly selected 20 percent of a school’s population and convinced teachers that the selected students showed unusual potential for intellectual growth. Eight months later these unusual or “magic” children showed significantly greater gains in IQ than did the remaining children, who had not been singled out for the teachers’ attention. The change in the teachers’ expectations had led to an actual change in the performance of these randomly selected children. In other words, the children did better, not because they were any more intelligent than their classmates, but because they learned that their teachers—significant others—believed that they could.

To put this phenomenon in context with the self-concept, we can say that when a teacher communicates to a child the message “I think you’re bright,” the child accepts that evaluation and changes her self-concept to include it. Unfortunately, we can assume that the same principle holds for students whose teachers send the message, “I think you’re stupid.”

This type of self-fulfilling prophecy has been shown to be a powerful force for shaping the self-concept and thus the behavior of people in a wide range of settings outside the schools. In medicine, patients who unknowingly use placebos—substances such as injections of sterile water or doses of sugar pills that have no curative value—often respond just as favorably to treatment as those who actually received a drug. The patients believe they have taken a substance that will help them feel better, and this belief actually brings about a “cure.” In psychotherapy Rosenthal and Jacobson describe several studies suggesting that patients who believe they will benefit from treatment do so regardless of the type of treatment they receive. In the same vein, when a doctor believes that a patient will improve, the patient may do so precisely because of this expectation, whereas another person for whom the doctor has little hope often fails to recover. Apparently the patient’s self-concept as sick or well—as shaped by the doctor—plays an important role in determining the actual state of health.