Talk:Self-fulfilling prophecy/Archives/2013

Summary Version
The self-fulfilling prophecy article on Wikipedia provides readers with a tremendous amount of information on the concept of self-fulfilling such as the history, including examples from different countries. The article also shares modern day examples of self-fulfilling prophecy by discussing movies, sports, etc., and also depicts how self-fulfilling prophecy applies to a lot of things that one may not have thought of; for example literature, and art. It’s important for the article to discuss modern day self-fulfilling prophecy as well as the history, however it’s also important for a self-fulfilling prophecy article on Wikipedia to also briefly discuss topics such as prejudice, and education. Wikipedia is just as popular as the google search, and if individuals are going to use it for their personal reference or even to reference in a paper due, it’s important for the readers to also be educated on self-fulfilling prophecy on the social psychology level. I plan to improve the article by researching and inputting information relating to self-fulfilling prophecy such as prejudice. It’s important for one to know that self-fulfilling prophecy can easily be intertwined with prejudice simply based on the definition. In Aronson et al. (2013), self-fulfilling prophecy is defined as “people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to behave consistently with people’s original expectations, making the expectation come true.” (Aronson et. al., p. 53, 2013) I would like to incorporate this concept in to the article more in details, but briefly, to give readers a clear understanding. The current Wikipedia added information on sports, and movies, which may make the reading fun and less boring, however as a student taking a social psychology class, I would like to be able to pull up the article and be able gain some knowledge on social psychology topics in addition to just entertaining topics. I feel, this is where the article mainly lacks information. I would also like to improve the article by briefly discussing how self-fulfilling prophecy also exists in education, and the work field. The article lists other examples pertaining to self-fulfilling prophecy, however it does not elaborate on all of them. This elaboration is not necessary, but can be helpful to the reader. Therefore to improve the article, I would like briefly elaborate one of the examples, which is Pygmalion. To further improve the article, I would like to consider adding in more social psychology examples and possibly remove some of the lengthy history that may not be as important as the other discussed sections in the article. Wikipedia is a source to provide individuals with brief answers and/ or knowledge on a specific topic, but should not be used as a sole reference for any given topic. Therefore including brief information on a subject matter that is not given in the article, could be used as an incentive for the reader to do more research on the specified topic.

Reference Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2013). Social psychology. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.

Abilhomme C (talk) 04:30, 16 November 2013 (UTC)