Which of the following examples best shows how expectations can be self fulfilling prophecies?

A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when an originally false social belief leads people to act in ways that objectively confirm that belief. This article presents an overview of 50 years of research on self-fulfilling prophecies. First, some of the controversies surrounding Rosenthal and Jacobson's (1968) finding that teacher expectations influence student IQ are described. Those controversies have led to several modern lines of research—including meta-analysis, studies of the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes, research comparing the extent to which self-fulfilling prophecy vs. accuracy characterizes naturally occurring social perception, and a search for conditions strengthening and weakening self-fulfilling prophecies. Modern research has also begun investigating the role of self-fulfilling prophecies in close relationships (such as parent–child, college roommates, and romantic couples). Underexplored areas offering fertile ground for future self-fulfilling prophecy research are identified, as are some of the ways existing self-fulfilling prophecy research contributes to understanding relations between social beliefs and social reality.

Abstract

Self-fulfilling prophecy, also known as interpersonal expectancy effect, refers to the phenomenon whereby a person's or a group's expectation for the behavior of another person or group serves actually to bring about the prophesied or expected behavior. The history and diversity of this area of inquiry shows that the expectations of psychological researchers, classroom teachers, judges in the courtroom, business executives, and health care providers can unintentionally affect the responses of their research participants, pupils, jurors, employees, and patients. Meta-analytic procedures are used to evaluate the social importance of the magnitudes of the obtained effects.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The self-fulfilling prophecy becomes a potential asset when people are labeled as having talents, strengths, abilities, and positive resources. Just as clients who are labeled with disorders may come to internalize their negative labels, so too may clients come to internalize positive labels. Just as therapists may inadvertently change the way they treat a client based on the DSM diagnostic label applied, so too may a therapist change the way the client is treated based on the positive label applied. Such a process may serve to further enhance the labeled strengths, and as the client becomes more cognizant of his or her potential, the client may also become more interested in nurturing these talents and strengths, and more confident in utilizing these skills and positive resources in the pursuit of complete mental health.

The application of positive labels to diagnostic assessment can counteract the many negative effects of negative labels as described previously. In addition, clinicians can capitalize on the positive effects of labeling, even when helping clients to overcome areas of problem and weakness. Indeed, labeling the positive produces a more balanced, well-rounded conceptualization of the client whose make-up may have previously been closely linked by both the client and therapist only to the presenting problem(s). Additionally, the labeling of assets and strengths may provide clinicians with a starting point from which to build a treatment plan and can serve as sources of motivation for clients to work from in the therapeutic treatment process (Snyder et al., 2003a).

In the following chapters, a number of positive psychological interventions and exercises are explained, followed by information on how therapists can decide upon and carry out positive psychology-infused treatment plans.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

The term self-fulfilling prophecies refers to the observation that sometimes our beliefs about others can lead us to treat them in such a way that they subsequently become what we expect them to be. Originally, the effect was demonstrated in the classroom and called the ‘pygmalion effect.’ In a seminal study, teachers were told at the beginning of a school year that certain of their students were potential late bloomers, who would be expected to excel during the school year under proper guidance. Even though there was nothing in actual fact that set those students apart from their colleagues, several months later their schoolwork had improved considerably. Since this initial observation, numerous similar investigations have testified to the robustness of the effect with regard to both, positive and negative expectations. Follow-up studies also demonstrated that perceivers sometimes unintentionally transmit their expectations through nonverbal signals. In a mock interview situation, for instance, it has been shown that when an interviewer's negative expectation about another person was reflected in his or her nonverbal behavior (i.e., keeping more physical distance), the interviewee actually performed more poorly (more details on this topic is dealt elsewhere within the encyclopedia).

3.2 Target Group Members’ Anticipation of Stigmatization

Conceptual and empirical work on self-fulfilling prophecies and stigmas suggests that the anticipation of stigmatization will affect the individual’s affective, cognitive, and behavioral reactions. The belief that others consider one to be inferior will usually be distressing. It can stimulate either assumption-confirming or assumption-disconfirming behavior, depending on the situation and the individual. Indeed, concerns about stigmatization have motivated several Black and Hispanic intellectuals to speak out against affirmative action. However, little research directly addresses this issue in the context of affirmative action. The research that exists suggests that many White women and racioethnic minorities expect to be stigmatized by others even in the absence of affirmative action. They anticipate that affirmative action will increase the stigmatization, although they may express less concern about this possibility than do White males. The anticipation of stigmatization, with or without affirmative action, affects their feelings and behavior. One consequence may be a lessening of support for affirmative action. Nonetheless, they apparently believe that the known disadvantages of discrimination outweigh the possible disadvantages of stigmatization because they consistently support nonpreferential versions of affirmative action. A second possible effect could be an increase in stereotype threat. Stereotype threat refers to the fear that one may behave in such a way as to confirm negative stereotypes of one’s group. It is exacerbated by factors that draw attention to the stereotype and to the individual’s membership in the devalued group. Although the presence of an AAP may be such a factor, this possibility has not yet been subjected to empirical investigation.

Researcher bias

Confirmatory bias is similar to self-fulfilling prophecy. We all seek to find evidence that validates our a priori beliefs or values, and may underestimate or ignore evidence that contradicts our expectations (e.g., Garb, 2005). Confirmatory bias occurs when a researcher develops a hypothesis or belief and uses respondents’ information to support that belief.

Cultural bias may be the outcome of assumptions or expectations regarding the motivations and values of test participants. Ethnocentrism is judging another culture according to the values and standards of one’s own culture. Cultural relativism concerns how an individual’s beliefs and behaviors would be perceived by others in terms of that individual’s own culture.

There are three sources in cross-cultural research. The first is construct bias, which occurs when the construct measured is not identical across groups. Ho’s (1996) work on filial piety (psychological characteristics associated with being a good son or daughter) provides a good example. Another important source of bias is method bias, which may be the outcome of sample incomparability, instrument characteristics, tester and interviewer effects, or the method of administration. Examples of method bias include differential stimulus familiarity in mental testing and differential social desirability in personality and survey research. A third source of bias is item bias or differential item functioning. An item is biased if participants with the same level on the underlying construct (e.g., they are equally extraverted), but those who come from different cultural groups do not have the same expected score on the item. The expected item score is usually derived from the total test score.

Manipulated Self-Motivation: The Pygmalion Effect

In George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, a cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle comes under the persuasive admonitions of one Professor Henry Higgins, an apparently worldly wise elocutionist. Professor Higgins transforms the vulgar street girl into a poised, articulate, refined young woman with aristocratic pretensions. The much beloved play was made into a Broadway musical and later the motion picture, My Fair Lady. The concept of Pygmalion change derived from the sculptor in Greek mythology who carved a statue of a beautiful woman who then became real. Whether in mythology or in the movies, the concept of radical human change is a powerful one.

The Pygmalion effect is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, according to sociologist Robert K. Merton, who coined the term in 1948. Self-fulfilling prophecy is a three-stage process beginning with a person’s belief – false at the time it is held – that a certain event will occur in the future.26 Next, this expectation or “prophecy” leads to behavioral change that would not have occurred if it were not for this false expectation. Finally, the expected event occurs and the prophecy is fulfilled, as shown in Figure 5.4.

The experimental consequences of the self-fulfilling prophecy were first explored by Robert Rosenthal in his doctoral research in clinical psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles in the mid-1950s.27 Rosenthal divided 108 subjects into 3 experimental groups: “success,” “neutral,” and “failure.” The subjects selected for the experiment were randomly assigned to these categories, but were told the category to which they were assigned, and were made aware of its significance. Aware of their ranking, subjects participated in a cognitive exercise and then later were retested to discern any differences. The researcher predicted that the experiment would show that “failures” would do worse on posttests, “neutrals” about the same, and the “success” designees would do better than expected. In fact, this very prediction held true. The only difference among the subjects was the expectation implanted into their minds that they were expected to perform according to their (falsely) prejudged ability.

Rosenthal was approached by the principal of an elementary school, Lenore Jacobson, who invited him to conduct a teacher-expectation experiment in her school.28 Near the end of the school year, Flanagan’s Tests of General Ability (ToGA) was administered to all pupils from kindergarten to fifth grade. ToGA, a nonverbal intelligence test, was described to the teachers as the “Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition.” It was meant to identify “later bloomers,” those who have not fully used their native abilities up to that point, but who were about to bloom.

The next academic year, the experimenters identified 20% of each teacher’s incoming students as “later bloomers.” However, they actually were randomly selected. No further interventions occurred during the school year to influence teacher behavior. When ToGA was administered at the end of the school year, pupils who had been designated as late bloomers had gained four more points in IQ testing than had their controlled classmates. Presumably, the teachers had provided an exceptional level of attention to the “bloomers” and the results were positive and measurable.

In the workplace, the Pygmalion effect can have a powerful influence on job performance and career development.29 If supervisors are told that newly completed trainees are “among the best” at the time they join their team, this belief will likely have a Pygmalion effect, and the supervisors will tend to believe that the workers perform better on the job than those for whom no special designation was given. Likewise, negative connotations about a class of workers are likely to affect the way in which employees are regarded by their supervisors. They may be appraised as not performing to standards if that is the expectation.

The Pygmalion effect is logical, once understood, and concludes that expectations alone can raise performance above – or plunge it below – established performance levels. This effect has been supported by many studies. However, the process seems calculating and manipulative and also prone to create circumstances that produce ambiguous results. Consider the individual who is designated as being exceptionally promising but who fails, despite his or her best efforts. Such a person is bound to feel rejected and bewildered by the process. Similarly, others are informed that not much is expected of them and become determined to show otherwise, and do.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Like the Matthew effect, the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy was introduced by Robert K. Merton. In his book, Social Theory and Social Structure, he defined it as the situations in which people's expectations can alter realities in the expected direction because the target person acts in accordance with the expectations. Self-fulfilling prophecy highlights the importance of definition of situations: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” This principle, however, works in many cases of subjective reality regarding human affairs, but not for natural affairs. Note that the definition of the situation does not have to be correct. Hence, a false definition of the situation may trigger a new behavior which can make the false definition become true.

There are plenty of examples self-fulfilling prophecies. Think of the banking system. Can a bank go bankrupt because of rumors that it is going bankrupt? According to self-fulfilling prophecy, that is very possible! If a good majority of the investors are convinced that the bank is going to collapse soon and that they may not be able to withdraw their money unless they do that as soon as possible, it may become a reality. Their expectations, which were not true beforehand, led to a new behavior which, in turn, resulted in what they expected. Some researchers explain underachievement of the black population in the United States with the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies. Prophesized underachievement becomes a reality.

There is empirical support for the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy. Ray C. Rist was interested in teacher–student relations based on the premise that students’ variations in success, rewards, and creativity should be considered in a larger scope, the social structure surrounding them. He, therefore, argued that the dynamics of the interaction are not uniform and hypothesized that initial presuppositions of teachers about their students’ abilities and their expectations are critical for academic achievement. Teachers, informed that certain students were ‘fast learners’ or ‘slow learners,’ treated those two groups of students differently and had different expectations. He observed that teachers have recognized that their expectations were biased and influenced by their social status and ethnicity.

How is it possible? One answer is that these expectations about others are communicated to those who are expected to behave in particular ways and that those who receive the message then react in accordance with this message and consequently confirm the expectations. The power of the message communicated is related to the subjective status of the message sender. If the person who claims a prophecy has high status in the eye of the message receiver, the message is perceived and followed as if true.

The overlapping aspects of the Pygmalion effect and self-fulfilling prophecies are clear: the power of expectations. But how are they different? The Pygmalion effect could be defined as a self-fulfilling prophecy that occurs at an interpersonal level. “One person's expectation for another person's behavior can quite unwittingly become a more accurate prediction simply for its having been made.” Whereas self-fulfilling prophecies explain the influence of beliefs on the consequent behavior, the Pygmalion effect specifically focuses on how one person's expectations about another person's behavior can turn out to be a reality just for having been expected.

The Pygmalion effect is more intriguing when it is applied to creativity. First, there are some settings, like school or business environments, in which creativity is markedly influenced by interpersonal relations. In those settings, power relations and the status of the others might play a significant role on the manifestation of creativity. The question above can be altered with that in mind: “What would happen if, for instance, teachers could change their expectations about the creativity of their students?” “Could this lead to a positive change for the students?”

Implications

Three kinds of implications flow from the work on interpersonal self-fulfilling prophecies. The first are the methodological implications for the conduct of scientific inquiry to minimize the effects of experimenter expectancy effects (and other effects of the experimenter). For example, the use of double-blind research designs flows directly from the need to control a variety of experimenter effects, including the effects of experimenter expectancy. More indirect consequences of a methodological sort flowing from this research are some of the work focusing on newer procedures for the analyses of scientific data, including work on meta-analysis, on contrast analysis, and other developments in significance testing and effect size estimation.

A second line of implications involves those for the study of nonverbal communication. For some 35 years, there have been strong reasons to suspect that the mediation of interpersonal expectancy effects depends heavily on unintended nonverbal communication, and this has generated a good deal of work on that topic. A third line of implications involves those for the practical consequences of these phenomena—for example, in classrooms, clinics, corporations, courtrooms, and, in particular, interpersonal contexts, such as those involving gender and race.

All three types of implications have been investigated intensively, but much of what needs to be known is not yet known. It seems very likely, however, that efforts to fill these gaps in knowledge will be repaid by noticeable progress in the methodological and the substantive development of the sciences.

STRESS MANAGEMENT/STRESS INOCULATION (JOHNSON, 2004)

When a patient enters treatment in an overwhelmed state or in crisis it presents an opportunity for cognitive behavioral changes that are beneficial to their overall ability to cope effectively. During a period of crisis their defenses are down and emotional distress is high. The patient feels an urgency to decrease the level of emotional distress. Because they are motivated toward alleviating emotional distress they are open to new ways of thinking and behaving.

Change is stressful, even when it is beneficial. Change requires effort and conscious awareness. In preparing to engage someone in the process of change, it is important to understand how they normally interact with their environment. The responses to stress are numerous and individualized, just as the variable approaches for intervening. Therefore, it is imperative to be prepared with a number of strategies for handling stress.

Because cognitions and mental processes have a strong influence, negative or positive, on the physical and emotional reactions to stress, cognitive restructuring is an important intervention.

Five aspects of mental processing that play a role in stress include:

Expectations/self-fulfilling prophecy: What a person believes will happen or expects to happen sometimes influences their behavior in a manner which increases the likelihood of the feared outcome. Negative expectations increase anxiety and stress. Identifying goals for change and facing such challenges with optimism and a positive attitude will facilitate optimal coping and management.

Mental imagery/visual imagery: Coinciding with expectations for a given situation a person will develop an associated mental picture and internal dialogue. This mental imagery increases anxiety and stress reactions. Positive expectation, in contrast, minimize the effects of life stressors and increase effective coping.

Self-talk: Internal dialogue takes place 24/7. Self-talk is the conversation or messages that a person has with themselves. It is common that a person is not aware of this internal dialogue or the consequences upon anxiety, stress, and self-esteem. Self-talk also influences mental imagery. Negative mental images and negative self-talk can result in anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms, whereas positive self-talk encourages self-confidence, effective coping, and a general feeling of well-being. Once there is awareness for negative self-talk the task is to create rational substitute statements to replace the negative thoughts for cognitive restructuring. Keep a journal to identify the damaging self-statements so that a rational substitute state can be developed to replace them.

Controlling and perfectionistic behavior: Perfectionism and unrealistic expectations often go hand in hand. Responses of controlling and perfectionistic behaviors are frequently an effort to avoid abuse, conflict, the unknown, or a feeling of being on-edge and inadequacy. Placing unrealistic expectations on others is a form of controlling behavior. Self-management consumes enough energy without expanding into the realm to control other. Additional consequences to the effort of controlling others are stress, anxiety, frustration, and anger.

Anger: Anger is a normal, healthy emotion when expressed appropriately. It can be damaging to self and others when expressed inappropriately because of the internal tension, or build-up, that predisposes alienation and explosiveness with others. This behavior results in low self-esteem and poor interpersonal relating. Chronic anger and hostility are related to the development or exacerbation of a number of physical symptoms, illnesses, and diseases. Anger can be a self-defense or unfinished business.