User:RLpsych309

The self-fulfilling prophecy, also know as the treatment effect, refers to a prediction being made and as a result of that prediction one acts accordingly causing the prediction to eventually come true. What was supposed to be the reaction or effect, ends up becoming the cause. The prophecy was made known by Robert Merton in 1948 and he used the prophecy in a sense where the prediction was false. The modern day use of the prophecy alludes to a prediction that is neither wrong nor right. The prophecy has also taken on other names such as the Oedipus Complex, where Oedipus takes action to avoid the oracle’s prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother but ends up fulfilling the prophecy trying to avoid it. People subconsciously exhibit the prophecy in their everyday lives and will never stop to think about it and how they might be able to prevent the outcome.

The Placebo Effect has self-fulfilling effects within it, where people will act in a certain way given how they should act before they take something even if they do not actually receive that something. The Placebo Effect is prevalent in studies done on medicine for drug companies where one group blindly receives the medicine and the other group receives a “placebo” or sugar pill. If the participants know beforehand what the effects of the drug are, then they might portray that they are feeling a certain way when they truly only took a sugar pill. The self-fulfilling prophecy would be absent in studies like this however, if the participants were told beforehand which group they were assigned to.

There is also what is referred to as the ‘suicidal prophecy’ which is the mirror prophecy or opposite of the self-fulfilling prophecy. This refers to a prediction leading to actions that cause the prediction to be untrue or unfulfilled.

Gas
In 1979, there was a gasoline scare in the state of California. The newspapers wrote continuous stories that there was going to be a shortage of gasoline in the state. This caused almost every California motorist to go out and fill up their car as they tried to keep their tanks as full as possible. Before this wave of panic, motorists would on average fill their tanks up when they had about a fourth of a tank left. Now motorists were unnecessarily filling up and in just a few days had depleted the large gasoline reserves. The newspapers had caused the panic of some 12 million people which led to the shortage of the gasoline. After the panic had subsided, there was no diminishing of the allotment of gasoline to the state of California.

Sports
This example could apply to various sports coaches, but for this example a basketball coach is used. A basketball coach decides at practice the day before the game that there are a few players who are not looking good. He predicts that they will not perform well during the game the next day and decides not to start them, or even play them throughout the first half. When he does finally put them into the game, the players are not warmed up and do not end up performing well at all. The coach then attributes their poor performance to his prediction the day before rather than the fact that they are not warmed up.

Everyday Life
This example involves a man or woman predicting how their day will go. When a man/woman wakes up in the morning they predict that they are going to have a bad day. Throughout the day the man/woman subconsciously partake in actions that will cause them to feel lousy or become upset just to make sure they have a bad day. They might have had a normal day, but they altered their day to make sure their prediction of a bad day came true.

Television
Another example is a show that used to air on television on the Disney Channel. The show was called That’s so Raven and the star of the show was a psychic girl who was able to see things happening to her and her friends/family in the future. Many episodes, her psychic visions were bad things that were going to happen and she would try to take action against the visions to prevent them from happening at all. Almost every episode the vision still happened, because her attempted actions to prevent the visions ended up causing the vision.

School
Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University conducted a study at an Oak primary school in 1968. He used 18 female teachers and 650 students as his participants. Rosenthal administered a test which was said to determine intelligence quotients and what 20% will excel in intellectual progress that year to the students before they were assigned to the teachers. The teachers were given the names of the 20% that were supposedly going to excel before they actually met the students. The only actual difference in the students was what the teachers had preconceived in their minds. The test was re-administered at the end of the year and the findings showed that the 20% actually did show an above-average intelligence increase. The teachers also reported that these students distinguished themselves from the other students in their intellectual capabilities and behavior. The teachers paid more attention to the “special” students and therefore caused them to excel intellectually when compared to their peers.

Diminishing Effects
There is a possible partial solution for the self-fulling prophecy. The prophecy exists because people believe that their prediction can actually become a reality and therefore act accordingly. If these same people were to believe that the outcomes of their predictions could not become a reality then the prophecy would not play a role. The more that people learn about the prophecy the more likely they are to be able to realize the predictions could not possibly become a reality. People would think harder about whether that certain outcome is feasible or not and not allow the outcome to alter their actions. This is a hopeful idea though, because biases and prophecies are inherent to human beings. No matter how much somebody has learned about the self-fulling prophecy, it could be hard to realize when one is exhibiting the prophecy and one might not be able to avoid altering their actions.