Selffulfilling Prophecies

1
Self-fulfilling Prophecies

• Plous Ch 20

2
Do you engage in self-fulfilling
prophecies?

• If a card has a vowel on one side, than it has an
  even number on the other side.

• Which card would you need to turn over in order
  to decide whether the person is lying?

3
Pick One

• E
• 4

• K
• 7

4
Finding (Wason Honson- Laird
1972)

• Most common response
• CONFIRMING
• E
• 4

5
WHY? Confirmation bias so pervasive?

• a positive test strategy (Klayman and Young-
  Won Ha , 1987)
• Social beliefs - confirming evidence more
  relevant
• (Jane real-estate agent or
• research librarian?)

6
Social (political) implications

• people create a world in which hypotheses become
  self-confirming and
• beliefs self-perpetuating

7
Self-Fulfilling prophecy

• Merton (1948)
• in the beginning, a FALSE definition of the
  situation evoking a
• NEW BEHAVIOR which makes the originally false
  conception come true

• Misconceptions
• that
• come
• TRUE!

8
Pygmalion effect (Rosenthal Jackson, 1968)

• Grade school TEACHERS given
• DIAGNOSTIC information indicating
• 20 students would BLOOM..gt
• IQ tests 8 months later these students did
• better
  than others
• EXPECTATIONS influence BEHAVIOR

9
PYGMALION EFFECT

• Treat people as if they were what they ought to
  be and you help them to become what they are
  capable of being
• Johann W von Goethe
• halo effect if think pretty will act
  differently
• racial stereotypes body language

10
How to reduce confirming biases self-fulfilling
prophesies?

• 1 Emotional apparels and warnings
• (work better than instructions, cognitive
• appeals)
• 2 Frame questions in way that encourages
• disconfirming answers
• I.e.. ask the opposite Is it true..
• 3 Consider why action/answer may be
• WRONG

11
What might wrong with this prediction (belief)?

• We
• can
• BOMB THEM
• into submission