Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Early Research

The earliest empirical research on self-fulfilling prophecies examined whether teachers' false expectations for their students caused students to achieve at levels consistent with those teachers' expectations. Repeatedly, although not always, research demonstrated that teacher expectations are indeed self-fulfilling students (sometimes) come to perform at levels consistent with their teachers' originally false expectations.

This research has been interpreted by many scholars as providing a powerful insight into social, educational, and economic inequality. Teacher expectations seem to systematically advantage students from already advantaged backgrounds (e.g., Whites, middle-class students) and disadvantage students from already disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., ethnic minorities, lower-class students). To the extent that education is a major steppingstone toward occupational and economic advancement, self-fulfilling prophecies, it would seem, constitute a major social force operating to keep the disadvantaged in “their place.”

Further support for self-fulfilling prophecies was provided by additional early research showing that social stereotypes can indeed be self-fulfilling. Classic studies showed that both physical attractiveness and racial stereotypes could be self-fulfilling. When men interviewed a woman who they falsely believed was physically attractive (accomplished through the use of false photographs in nonface-to-face interviews), not only were the men warmer and friendlier to her, but she became warmer and friendlier in response. Moreover, when White interviewers treated White interviewees in the same cold [Page 736]and distant manner they used with Black interviewees, the performance of the White interviewees suffered.

Self-fulfilling prophecies have been demonstrated in a wide variety of educational, occupational, professional, and informal contexts. They have been demonstrated in experimental laboratory studies, experimental field studies, to naturalistic studies. Indeed, it is fairly easy to string together a few of the classic studies to tell a compelling story about how teachers' expectations, employers' expectations, and expectations in everyday interactions victimize people from stigmatized social groups. And, indeed, that is exactly what some observers have done. The logic here is quite simple. Stereotypes are widely shared and inaccurate. Stereotypes lead to inaccurate expectations. These expectations, in turn, are self-fulfilling. According to this perspective, self-fulfilling prophecies constitute a major source of social inequalities and social problems.

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