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A self-fulfilling prophecy refers to the phenomenon of making a prediction or expectation of something and this “prediction” becomes true because "of one belief that it will." and behaved in a manner that created this. This suggests that a person’s belief can influence their actions. The principle of this phenomenon is that people create consequences regarding people or events, based on their previous knowledge towards that specific subject. Additionally, self-fulfilling prophecy can be applied to negative and positive outcomes.

The first psychologist to discover this phenomenon was W.I. Thomas who came out with the Thomas Theorem which is “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” In other words, the consequence will be brought to fruition based on how the situation was interpreted. The scientist who coined the term “self-fulfilling prophecy” was Robert K. Merton -using Thomas’ idea- which popularized the idea of “how a belief or expectation, correct or incorrect, could bring about a desired or expected outcome.”

History of The Concept

Merton took the concept a step further and applied it to a fictional situation. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, he uses the example of a “bank run” to show how self-fulling thoughts can make an unwanted situation to happen. In his example, he mentions how a number of people falsely believed that the bank was going to file for bankruptcy. Because of this false fear, many people decided to go to the bank and ask for all of their cash at once. These actions caused the bank to indeed go bankrupt because banks rarely have the amount of cash that can satisfy a multiple amount of customers asking for all of their existing cash at once.

Merton concludes this example with the following analysis: “The prophecy of collapse led to its own fulfillment.”

While Merton’s example focused on self-fulfilling prophecies within a business, his theory is also applicable to interpersonal communication since it’s found to have a “potential for triggering self-fulfilling prophecy effects”. This is due to the fact “that an individual decides whether or not to conform to the expectations of others.” This makes people rely or fall into self-fulfilling thoughts since they are trying to satisfy other’s perception of them.

Self-fulfilling theory can be divided into two subsections, one would be the Pygmelion effect which is when “one person has expectations of another, changes her behavior in accordance with these expectations, and the object of the expectations then also changes her behavior as a result.”

Stereotype

Self-fulfilling prophecies are one of the main contributions to racial prejudice and vice versa. According to the Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity & Culture “Self-fulfilling prophecy makes it possible to highlight the tragic vicious circle which victimizes people twice: first, because the victim is stigmatized (STIGMA) with an inherent negative quality; and secondly, because he or she is prevented from disproving this quality.” To prove this, the author uses the example that Merton used in his book about how white workers expected that black people would be against the principles of trade unionism because white workers considered black workers to be “undisciplined in traditions of trade unionism and the art of collective bargain-ing.” This predictions caused the event to happen (black workers would be against trade unionism), because this forecasts became fact when all white people started to believe this and did not let the black workers get a job at any white men business. Which made black workers unable to learn or approve the principles of trade unionism since they were not given the chance of working in a work environment where these principles where seen or experienced.

In the article “The Accumulation of Stereotype-based self-fulfilling Prophecies.” The authors mention how teachers can encourage stereotype-based courses and can interact with students in a manner that encourages self-fulfilling thoughts. The example that was given was the one of a female student who seemed to do bad in math and her math teacher and counselor “channel her in the direction of confirming sex stereotypes” By this the author means that the teachers never encouraged her to improve her abilities in math. Instead, the teacher and the counselor recommended classes that were dominated by females.