Blog Number One: A Self Fulfilling Prophecy

As i read this week, the concept which resonated most with me was that of the self fulfilling prophecy. As Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) demonstrated, expectations of those around us do in fact have an effect on the way we are treated. In their experiment, Rosenthal and Jacobson administered tests to a group of students, and then randomly selected a group of students which they labeled "late bloomers". This label had no bearing on actual intelligence (hence it being random), but in a follow up analysis they found that the late bloomer group actually experienced a significant gain in intelligence as opposed to the control group. They theorized that the expectations placed on them by being labeled as smarter drove their instructors to pay more attention to them, which in turn actually made them smarter.

I see this effect at work a lot when i watch mixed martial arts fights. In a recent event, a professional boxer fought a more well-rounded wrestling specialist. For the entire run-up to the fight, the boxer worked on different ways to avoid the wrestler's take downs, altering his stance to avoid lead leg kicks, and so on and so forth. However, mere minutes before the fight, he decided to alter his plan of attack and disregard his corner's advice in favor of a pure boxing style because he felt he had to prove that boxing was the superior fighting style. He was taken down almost immediately with a technique which only works on an opponent in a boxing stance, and the wrestler controlled him for a few minutes before seeming to get bored, and choking the boxer using his own fearsome right arm. I believe the more rounded fighter would have won even if the boxer would have stuck to the plan, but his idea that boxing was the superior style certainly fulfilled the 'prophecy' of what one would expect from a fighter and a boxer.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development. New York, NY US: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.