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How Self-Fulfilling Prophecies By Terry Bragg Managers often predict the performance of their staff with precision and accuracy. Employees can tell you exactly how their coworkers, bosses, and customers will act in certain situations. This doesn’t mean they have psychic abilities. Instead they may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. According to The Law of Self-fulfilling Prophecy, people respond the way you expect them to respond. You get what you expect. There are two types of self-fulfilling prophecies. The first type is the Pygmalion Effect. You have expectations about someone. You then treat them according to your expectations of them. How you treat them causes them to act according to your expectations. Lo and behold! You discover that you were right all along. The second type of self-fulfilling prophecy is where people autonomously change their behavior to agree with a prophecy. For example, investors expect the stock market to go down so they stop investing or they sell their stock. Their actions cause the market to drop. By acting on their expectations, the investors created what they expected. Notice that self-fulfilling prophecies are cyclical. We form expectations. We communicate those expectations either explicitly or indirectly. People then adjust their behavior in response to how we treat them and consequently match our expectations. The original expectations become true. This reinforces our original expectations. You frequently see examples of the self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, you go to a restaurant expecting bad service. You send nonverbal signals to the server that makes them wish they weren’t serving your table and sure enough you get bad service. Self-fulfilling prophecies frequently occur in the workplace. For example, your company assigns you a new employee for your project team. You take one look at them and know they can’t get the job done and will be a troublemaker. You handle the situation by primarily working with other members of the project team that you have confidence in and trust. You delay giving information to the new employee and give them work assignments at the last minute. Consequently, they are either unable to complete their assignments on time or they do poorer quality work because they rush to complete their assignments. They complain about the lack of information and the lack of support you are giving them. This fulfills and reinforces your expectation that they are a poor performer and a troublemaker. The self-fulfilling prophecy works with our own behavior and with other’s behavior. People who expect to be successful are more likely to succeed. People who expect to fail are more likely to fail. We live up to our expectations. Here are some interesting things to note about self-fulfilling prophecies. • A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs despite the truth or falsity of the prophecy. For example, a salesperson thinks that they have sold out their sales territory. Therefore they don’t do the things that help generate sales. As they expected, they don’t sell anything. Along comes a new salesperson who doesn’t know that other sales people have sold out their sales territory, and they set record sales. • There is plenty of experimental evidence that proves the self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon. For example, experiments have shown that teachers who believe that their students are top performers get top performance out of their students. Conversely, teachers who believe that their students are poor performers get poor performance from their students. Students live up to the expectations of their teachers. • Forming expectations is a natural process and is unavoidable. You will form expectations and act based upon those expectations. Other people will respond to how you act. The problem is that we usually don’t realize that we are influencing other people’s behavior to match our expectations. • Expectations about ourselves tend to be self-sustaining and self-reinforcing. Because of our expectations, we filter and select information that supports our expectations. • We are more comfortable with people who match our expectations than with people who do not meet our expectations—regardless of whether our expectations are high or low. We are more comfortable when we believe we can predict other people’s behavior. • A manager or supervisor’s expectations about their employee’s performance affect the employee’s performance. This is particularly true with performance evaluations. Performance evaluations not only appraise past performance but influence and shape future performance. • Self-fulfilling prophecies affect stereotypes and may reinforce stereotypical behavior. Because you stereotype someone, you treat them consistent with your stereotype. Consequently, they respond consistently with how you treat them. Their response confirms your belief in the truthfulness of the stereotype. Self-fulfilling prophecies affect our beliefs about racial and ethnic groups, gender differences, aging, health, and generational differences. Be aware of how you may be creating self-fulfilling prophecies in your workplace because you get what you expect. Terry Bragg and Peacemakers Training offers a variety of tools for promoting, maintaining, and recognizing excellence in your workplace. We also offer tools for helping you achieve and maintain personal excellence. To learn more about these tools, click here: Tools for Workplace and Personal Excellence To find out more about Terry's book, 31 Days to High Self-Esteem, click here: 31 Days to High Self-Esteem To learn more about onsite seminars and workshops for improving interpersonal relationships, resolving conflict, and promoting and maintaining excellence in your workplace, click here: Seminars & Workshops ©2002 All rights reserved Terry Bragg•Peacemakers Training Terry Bragg runs a company called Peacemakers Training in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is the author of the book 31 Days to High Self-Esteem. He works with organizations to create a workplace where people want to work, and with managers who want their people to work together better. If you want your organization or your people to have more energy, more trust, more respect, and more meaning, please contact him at: Peacemakers Training Subscribe to our Free |
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