Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: How to Use Them to Your Advantage

Have you ever had one of those days where nothing seems to go right? You overslept, you can’t find your left shoe, and your coffee machine is going slower than a sloth working at a DMV. The day just seems to continue going downhill until you finally have a breakdown over dropping a spoon. Trust me, I’ve been there. Unfortunately, part of that bad day may have been due to our own creation. In social psychology, there is a concept called a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is when a belief that we hold ends up influencing our actions and fulfilling our initial prediction. We often focus on this topic when we discuss negative instances, such as our bad day. By believing that we were having a horrible day, we acted in accordance with that belief. You woke up aggravated at yourself for having slept in, so you interpret your coffee machine as being out to get you when it takes its normal time to start up. Later that day, you express more frustration during a job interview which leads to getting rejected despite your extensive experience. When you eventually get home and just want to watch some Netflix while eating your favorite ice cream, you end up knocking the spoon over when you reach for it because you’re so preoccupied with replaying your mistakes in your head. This effect is due to a link between belief and behavior. What you believe influences how you behave, which in turn reinforces that initial belief and causes a feedback loop.

Another type of self-fulfilling prophecy is behavioral confirmation. This happens when people’s social expectations cause them to behave in such a way that encourages others to match their beginning expectations. Your new lacrosse coach may have heard from one of your teachers that you’re a star athlete, which could lead to them holding you to higher expectations and giving you higher praise on a regular basis. Suddenly, you feel more competent, so you end up running that extra lap to improve your endurance while your coach watches proudly from the sidelines. This positive outcome can also be called the Pygmalion effect, where high expectations lead to improved performance.

Applying This to Your Daily Life
Self-fulfilling prophecies can work against you if you don’t monitor your thoughts, but you can also use them to your advantage. We can do this through three steps. The first is identifying what kind of mindset you need for each situation. As nice as it would be, we can’t simply tell ourselves that we’ll get a perfect 100% on next week’s exam and wake up with a perfect 4.0 GPA. However, you can almost ‘fake it till you make it’ by shifting your mindset to reassuring yourself that you’re an intelligent student who works hard and uses each opportunity to grow. It may feel uncomfortable and even like a lie at first, especially since many of us already have imposter syndrome to begin with, but if you repeat this practice enough you’ll eventually shift your actions to match that belief. The key is to be consistent with it. Even if you don’t get the grade you were hoping for at first, you can ask yourself what your ideal student would do in that situation. They would understand that it’s okay that they misunderstood some of the material because now they can use it as an opportunity to review the questions they got wrong and to learn from it. Even if it feels silly, this continuous affirmation can completely change your life in the long run.

The second step is to surround yourself with people who match your desired self. The mind is like a magical farm; whatever seeds you plant in it will grow. Unfortunately, there is no automatic quality control that sorts out our negative thoughts or realizes when something is self-deprecating. Growing up on the shyer side, I used to always be somewhat envious of the girls who were super outgoing and friendly to other people. Despite having no good reason to, I always thought that I could never be like them because I simply didn’t have the skills or confidence. I also surrounded myself with people who had the same kind of low self-esteem and external locus of control who agreed that it was out of our control and that some people were just born lucky. It took a while, but once I started learning about psychology during my freshman year of high school I told myself that I would just try it out, even if it didn’t work. Friendly people are kind, so I would give one person a compliment each day. It was scary at first, but once others started to smile and respond positively then I gained confidence in this action and eventually started to actually consider myself as outgoing. I noticed that after I had befriended those outgoing girls in my class that it was easier to slip into the role of who I wanted to be because they encouraged and reinforced that behavior too.

The final step is to continue revising and modifying your goals. Not every self-fulfilling prophecy will come true because there are always factors outside of your control. You may tell yourself that you’re going to become the most naturally tan person on campus, but if you’re like me whose skin would rather burn to a crisp before allowing an extra drop of melanin in it, that’s probably not going to happen. You should be realistic about your goals, the potential obstacles, and how to successfully achieve them. Other prophecies may also not work for you because they’re a little too far out of your comfort zone. That’s okay, you just have to revise your plan and maybe start a little bit smaller before working your way up. You should focus on an attribute that you can change, rather than a large objective that may derail your process if you don’t immediately achieve it. The main thing that I hope you take away from this blog is that the next time you’re approaching a goal, think about how the ideal version of you would work towards it. Truly convince yourself that you embody those qualities, and your actions will follow accordingly.

References

Myers, D. G., & Twenge, J. M. (2022). Social psychology (14th ed.). McGraw Hill Education. 

Robert Rosenthal; Lenore Jacobson (September 1968). "Pygmalion in the classroom". The Urban Review. 3 (1): 16–20.