Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Statement of the Problem
People of color fall victim to self-fulfilling prophecy. Self-fulfilling prophecy is a false belief that leads to its own fulfillment. This process involves three, core events. First, a perceiver must hold a false belief about a target. Second, the perceiver must treat the target in a way that matches his or her false belief. Finally, the target must respond to the treatment she or he receives by confirming the originally false belief (Madon, Willard, Guyll, & Scherr, 5/8 2011).
Introduction
There is substantial evidence that self-fulfilling prophecy appears regularly and throughout society. This problem increases in people of color, in many instances individuals are not consciously aware
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The amount of influence is critical to understanding why people of color fall victim to self-fulfilling prophecy. Rosenthal and Jacobson developed a theory that demonstrates how self-fulfilling prophecy effects students. This study teachers were led to believe that Harvard identified “intellectual blooming” in students that performed poorly in previous years. Teachers were tasked with supporting this young minds, by the end of the school year these identified late bloomers had an increase in IQ scores. This study, shows that beliefs were negative or positive come into being when people are lead to believe them true. It would have been unethical for teachers to tell students they are failures and will never amount to anything, so teachers were led to believe they had untapped potential (Madon, Willard, Guyll, & Scherr, 5/8 …show more content…
The idea of self-fulfilling prophecy displayed itself early in the twentieth century. Unions created and sealed the fate for African-Americans by not allowing them to join. African-Americans were not allowed to join unions, it was the belief that they would take a job as a replacement during a potential strike. This idea limited the number of African-Americans that were able to find suitable work. When Caucasians workers went on strike African-Americans were available to take their places in order to provide for their families. The perceiver (union) believed that African-Americans (target) would take jobs that Caucasians left to strike and that belief became reality due to the (treatment) of initially not allowing them to join the union (Madon, Willard, Guyll, & Scherr, 5/8