The following example may seem unrelated but humor me, please.
So, you and your family are having a quality time at home when suddenly your father asks you to get him a cup of tea. Being the good offspring you are, you comply.
You fill up the teacup to the brim and go from the kitchen to the living room without a problem. As you enter your older sister says "He's going to drop it". That makes you nervous so you start walking slowly.
Because you decided to be more careful, your parents start to get worried as well that you will drop it. The level of intensity is high so that worry transfers to you and you start to get nervous and sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, and all the rest of Eminem's Lose Yourself lyrics.
However, instead of winning a rap battle tournament, you end up dropping the teacup as the look of disappointment from your parents overwhelms you while your sister says "I told you so". She's correct after and had made a correct prophecy, right?
A prophecy requires someone with high intelligence or someone who knows a lot of things others don't. You can't have scientific theory without a correct prophecy. And while the prophecy was correct technically, your sister actually fulfilled her own prophecy.
If your sister hasn't said "He's going to drop it", none of the events that followed up would have happened. Your parents wouldn't have gotten worried and you wouldn't have gotten nervous and dropped the teacup.
That's what your sister did here, she participated in her own prediction wagering the odds in her favor. If we assumed she was just watching you carry the tea to your father on CCTV camera while out with friends and made the same prophecy, it wouldn't have happened.
You can't predict something and participate in it and call it a prophecy. It's like predicting a player in the team you play for would get a red card and then punch the referee a minute into the match.
Well, it's a long story but let's set the basics.
Self-fulfilling prophecies aren't exactly something new. They also happen in our lives a lot. The number of analysts and media personnel who participate in their own prediction is staggering that you may not be able to name someone who doesn't do that. Still, people fall for it.
That's a story for another part. As for self-fulfilling prophecies.
American psychologist, Robert Rosenthal, taught for over 35 years at Harvard and became chairman of the psychology department there. He conducted a few experiments, which he published in his book "Pygmalion in the Classroom"
Rosenthal tested two classrooms at the same level. Both classes scored the same. However, he went to a newly appointed teacher and told him that people in Class A are very smart and had done very well in their exams, Class B, however, are quite the opposite as they lacked intelligence and scored poorly in the exams.
By the end of the school year, another test was set were students in Class A actually scored higher than the ones in Class B.
When the teacher was told about the students' levels, believed it. That resulted in him treating Class A with a lot more dedication while submitting to the false premise that Class B students are hopeless.
The level of education and tolerance each class received was different hence each class result was different. All of that is because of a prediction a teacher made before even really knowing each class.
The book has around 300 experiments of the same nature, including one similar to the one above but it was the students who were given different information about the teacher. The class that was told good things about the teacher praised him by the end of the year, while the class that was told bad things about the teacher thought poorly of him by the end of the year
Let's say there are two neighboring countries that feel animosity toward each other exist. Let's call them East Amiristan and West Amiristan.
A leader of one country would have a gut feeling without prior reasons that the other country is planning an attack prompting him to pre-emptively put the military at the borders to stop them. The other country's leader would see that and send his army to the border as well.
One wrong move and war could start all because of a wrong prediction and the rest followed suit. That's also called "Confirmation Bias", which is a form of self-fulfilling prophecies, which is the topic of the next part.
Not every prediction or prophecy is correct even if the result matches it. Some people make predictions that end up happening, however, they might not have happened without that prediction in the first place.
The experiments show us that an entire generation could have their education ruined all because of wrong prior beliefs.
The danger of this way of thinking will be highlighted and elaborated on in the next part. Still, I hope this part helped paint the idea.
