A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that, through just being predicted, causes itself to be true. The term was first used by Robert K Merton in 1948 – he defined it as to describe ‘a false definition of the situation, evoking a behaviour which makes the originally false conception true’. This means that our psychological responses to fears about the future actually have the power to make a false reality become true.
Putting these definitions into actual scenarios can help us better understand both the effects and commonness of self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, if let’s say Claire believes she is really awful at public speaking and thinks she will fail in a debating competition, she feels extra stress, and is more nervous than she would have otherwise been when she gives her speech. This could mean that she does in fact speak less well, meaning her prediction came true just because she predicted it. This is known as self-imposed prophecy – Claire’s own beliefs affecting her own actions affecting her own reality.
Self-fulfilling prophecies are extremely prevalent in educational settings, and can be incredibly harmful if not recognised. Firstly, something called ‘Stereotype Threat’. This can have very distressing effects, which can be seen in past theories of African American intelligence. Due to racism being common in America in the 1960s, which led to pseudoscientific claims of a genetic difference in intelligence between Black and white people, studies were conducted using standardised tests like IQ tests where African Americans seemed to score lower than white Americans. However, theories over genetic differences have since been disproved, and psychologists now know that it was the racism and negative stereotype that others held of African Americans in the 1960s that caused extra anxiety over the tests, which led to poorer results than what they were actually capable of. This is a different type of self-fulfilling prophecy than Claire’s fear of public speaking, because it was the prophecy and beliefs of others that then caused a change in someone else’s future and reality, rather than Claire’s own beliefs effecting her own reality. The ‘stereotype threat’ is an example of other-imposed prophecy, while Claire’s example is self-imposed prophecy.
And secondly, another example of self-fulfilling prophecies in education – the Pygmalion effect. It was tested by Rosenthal and Jacobsen in 1968 when they conducted an experiment that explored how teachers’ expectations of students influenced how they perform. They gave a group of primary school children an IQ test, and told the teachers the names of the 20% of students who had performed exceedingly well, showing ‘unusual potential for intellectual growth’. Actually, these students had been picked randomly, but eight months later when they were given another IQ test, these 20% did perform significantly higher than the rest. This was because the teachers had, after being told that these children were intelligent, given them extra attention, calling on them for answers more frequently and giving them detailed feedback.
The Pygmalion Effect was named after the character Pygmalion from the epic poem Metamorphoses. He falls in love with a statue he sculpted, treating it like a real woman, making it a bed and everything. He asks the gods to bring him a wife exactly like the statue. They grant his wish – the statue comes to life, and they live happily ever after. But how has that got anything to do with self-fulfilling prophecies? Or students completing IQ tests?
Well, the Pygmalion effect essentially means that others’ treatment of us can influence how we actually behave. So fitting that theory into Pygmalion’s story, we see that his love for the statue and treatment of it as a living woman led to it actually becoming a living woman – like how the teachers’ treatment of the students who they thought were uniquely intelligent led to them actually becoming uniquely intelligent. This is therefore another example of other-imposed prophecy, because it was the expectations of the teachers that influenced the students’ reality, but I would also argue that this Pygmalion effect is also an example of self-imposed prophecy. This is because the way the children were treated would have led to their own esteem of their intelligence becoming higher, because they were treated as though their education was worth caring about. They would have had more confidence in themselves, which could have led to them performing better in the second test. As cheesy as it sounds, this does in some ways prove that if you believe you can, you at least have a larger chance of actually being able to do something.
I hope I’ve left you with some interesting ideas about the power of belief, over yourself and over others, and how easily it can effect performance in things that may seem predestined or unchangeable.
