Self Fulfilling Stereotype Prophecy

The Similarities Between the Self Fulfilling Prophecy and Stereotype Threat

The self-fulfilling prophecy as laid out in ‘Pygmalion In The Classroom’ by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jackson is a component of the stereotype threat that Claude M. Steele discusses in his 1997 article ‘A Threat in the Air; How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance.’ Rosenthal and Jackson define the self-fulfilling prophecy as teachers treating students based on their expectations of whether or not the student will be successful. Accordingly, students will then meet the teacher’s expectations and adhere to the self-fulfilling prophecy. The stereotype threat expands beyond that as it looks at how people conform to, or disregard, stereotypes that

A person follows a positive stereotype when they reinforce it by succeeding and fulfilling the stereotype, which further perpetuates the stereotype for the group they belong to. I relate this to the way in which a student can conform to a positive expectation placed upon them by the teacher and consequently perform better in school. The teacher stereotypes a student to be an achiever, and thus treats them as such, causing them to self-fulfill a prophecy of success. In order to continue living up to the expectations placed upon them, the children under the self-fulfillment prophecy and the person under the stereotype threat must continuously improve

In this category, society sees the person negatively since they could not live up to high expectations. Their failure to conform can also appear in a positive way, as the person is breaking a potentially harming stereotype, despite the stereotype’s apparently good connotation. I see this as having the possibility to be a conscious choice, since as we grow older we tend to become aware of our stereotypes. However, children who have a positive self-fulfilling prophecy placed on them can still fail to fulfill the prophecy and thus fall into the same category as someone who does not conform to a positive stereotype. Society can place a negative stereotype upon a person in the same way that a teacher places negative expectations on a student. In the first sub-category, a person adheres to a negative stereotype, confirming the negative expectations that people place upon them in the same way that a child will confirm a teacher’s negative expectations of them by adhering to the self-fulfilling prophecy. Both groups may feel stuck in their labels and thus will not try to raise themselves out of their