A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's belief or expectation that the prediction would come true. In the phenomena, people tend to act the way they have been expected to in order to make the expectations come true. Self-fulfilling prophecies are an example of the more general phenomenon of positive feedback loops. A self-fulfilling prophecy can have either negative or positive outcomes. Merely applying a label to someone or something can affect the perception of the person/thing and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Interpersonal communication plays a significant role in establishing these phenomena as well as impacting the labeling process. American sociologists W. I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas were the first Western scholars to investigate this phenomenon. In 1928, they developed the Thomas theorem (also known as the Thomas dictum): "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." Another American sociologist, Robert K. Merton, continued the research, and is credited with coining the term "self-fulfilling prophecy" and popularizing the idea that "a belief or expectation, correct or incorrect, could bring about a desired or expected outcome." The works of philosophers Karl Popper and Alan Gewirth also contributed to the idea.
History An early precursor of the concept appears in Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment". The phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy" was coined by Robert K. Merton, a sociologist who also developed the ideas of anomie, social structure, and the modes of individual adaption. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, he uses the example of a bank run to show how self-fulfilling thoughts can make unwanted situations happen. In his illustration, rumors spread about the town that the local bank is going to file for bankruptcy, causing many people to rush to the bank and close their accounts. Because banks do not keep their total assets in cash, the bank was unable to fulfill all its customers' withdrawals, which eventually caused the bank to go bankrupt. Merton concludes with the analysis, "The prophecy of collapse led to its own fulfillment". While Merton's example focused on self-fulfilling prophecies within a community, self-fulfilling prophecies also apply to individuals, as individuals often conform to the expectations of others. This is also known as the Pygmalion effect, based on the experiments by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, where teachers were told that a random selection of students were expected to perform exceptionally well; those students showed a significant increase in test scores at the end of the year. Philosopher Karl Popper called the self-fulfilling prophecy the Oedipus effect:
One of the ideas I had discussed in The Poverty of Historicism was the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted. I had called this the "Oedipus effect", because the oracle played a most important role in the sequence of events which led to the fulfilment of its prophecy. [...] For a time I thought that the existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the social from the natural sciences. But in biology, too—even in molecular biology—expectations often play a role in bringing about what has been expected.The idea is similar to that discussed by the philosopher William James as "The Will to Believe." But James viewed it positively, as the self-validation of a belief.
Applications Examples abound in studies of cognitive dissonance theory and the related self-perception theory; people will often change their attitudes to come into line with what they profess publicly. In the United States, the concept was broadly and consistently applied in the field of public education reform, following the War on Poverty, as teacher expectations have been shown to influence student academic performance. Theodore Brameld noted: "In simplest terms, education already projects and thereby reinforces whatever habits of personal and cultural life are considered to be acceptable and dominant." The effects of teacher attitudes, beliefs, and values, affecting their expectations have been tested repeatedly, most notably in the Pygmalion in the Classroom study, where teachers were told arbitrarily that random students were likely to show significant intellectual growth. As a result, those random students actually ended the year with significantly greater improvement when given another IQ test. Though the changes may be subconscious, teachers who have higher expectations typically give "more time to answer questions, more specific feedback, and more approval". Likewise, students who have positive experiences with their teachers may study more. Academic self-fulfilling prophecies can be negative, however: one study indicated that female students may perform worse if they expect their male instructor to be sexist. The phenomenon of the "inevitability of war" is a self-fulfilling prophecy that has received considerable study. Fear of failure leads to deterioration of results, even if the person is objectively able to adequately cope with the problem. For example, fear of falling leads to more falls among older people. Americans of Chinese and Japanese origin are more likely to die of a heart attack on the 4th of each month, due to the number four being considered unlucky and a portent of death. Moore's law predicting that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years is often considered as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The belief that a bank is insolvent may help create the fact, but confidence in the bank's prospects may improve them. Similarly, stock-exchange panics and speculative bubbles can be both triggered by a widespread belief that the stock will go down (or up), thus starting the selling/buying mass move, etc. People adapt to the judgments and assessments made by society, regardless of whether they were originally correct or not. There are certain prejudices against a socially marginalized group (e.g., homeless people, drug addicts or other minorities), and therefore, people in this marginalized group actually begin to behave in accordance with expectations.
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