Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A Practical Guide to Its Use in Education

by Robert T. Tauber

What we expect, all too often, is exactly what we get. Nowhere is this more true than in education, where teachers' expectations of students are crucial. The self-fulfilling prophecy should be of great interest to teachers, both those in training and those in service. Whether or not a teacher is aware of it, the self-fulfilling prophecy is at work, impacting students either to their benefit or their detriment. It follows that teachers should be made aware of the SFP and how it can be used effectively in education. Using the new on-line research facilities, Dr. Tauber has compiled over 700 doctoral dissertations and countless journal articles on stereotyping, perception of social differences, race, gender, ethnicity, body features, age, socioeconomic levels, special needs, and other personal and situational factors. The last part of the book presents a collection of testimonials written from the viewpoint of practitioners.

Genres: Education

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in two minds about reading this book. I had this horrible feeling before I started that it was going to be a kind of American book. Not that all American books are bad – not at all, but there is a class of American books, like the whole genre of self-help books, that are truly awful. I think it was the fact Self-Fulfilling Prophecy was quickly abbreviated to SFP that made me worried. McCandless, I said, this book is going to be seriously bad. Fortunately, that didn’t prove to be an SFP, and I was much more than just a little pleasantly surprised. This book is worth getting your hands on, particularly if you are a teacher. In fact, teachers need to read this book.

A book I read years ago – one of the books I became obsessed with about judgement and human errors in reasoning – had an example of a military body that were training new recruits how to shoot. But some experimenters came along and 'tested' the recruits, but really just organised them randomly – telling some that they were impressively good shots (is this really your first time?) and others that they weren’t so good (unless we are being attacked by the side of a barn, you might want to keep your head down). They also shared these assessments with the trainers of the recruits. Then they came back at the end of the training period and found that their random assignment of the recruits ended up predicting how well they actually ended up being able to shoot. Their trainers and the recruits themselves believed the first test results and the recruits either lived up to or down to expectations. When the researchers told everyone what had happened, that they had not initially measured anything, just randomly assigned people to different groups, no one believed them.

This book is about just that phenomenon – it is called the Pygmalion Effect. Pygmalion is the guy My Fair Lady is based on. A sculptor who is seeking to make a statue of the perfect woman – and she turns out to be so beautiful that he falls in love with her and refuses all other women – until one day Venus decides to turn the statue into flesh and the sculptor gets to marry his creation. Our desires, our expectations, our beliefs are powerful and often dangerous things.

You walk into a class at the start of year and you notice someone has an unusual surname, you ask them about it and it turns out they are Danish. But you aren’t going to be fooled by that, Danish is just a polite way of saying Viking – you note that they are potentially someone who is going to rape and pillage (even metaphorically) everyone else in the class. You’ll need to keep this kid on a very short leash. Another child is called O’Shannessy, obviously an alcoholic and likely to get into fights every five minutes. The point is, though, that research has found that we really are influenced by our stereotypical assessments of others, particularly based on race, class, gender and physical attractiveness. And not only do we act on these stereotypes, but people respond to how we act towards them and it can have huge consequences for them.

Beautiful people get away with murder – and the problem is that, like white privilege and male privilege – the recipients of this privilege don’t even know they are the recipients of it. Nice things happen, and why shouldn’t they, they are nice people, nice things have happened to them all of their lives...

The big lesson from this book is the repeated refrain, if you don’t think you are biased, then you are probably the worst offender – you need to find ways of tripping yourself up, otherwise you will be cheating people and doing your bit to reinforce stereotypes that have real consequences on people.

Like I said, this book is really very good. And it is short, only a little over 150 pages. It is written for the lay reader and even teaches you how to use ERIC. A really lovely part of this was the last bit where various experts talk about their experience with self-fulfilling prophecy. Some of the stories would break your heart – and so they should. Can’t recommend this one too highly. If you are a teacher, this is compulsory reading.

[David Pulliam · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is clearly a dated work, there is a language that reflects the culture of the time (derogatory terms toward African Americans) and all the research is at least 20 years old. The book claims that the SFP is a global phenomenon and only cites studies from Western and Eastern countries leaving out South America, the Middle East and Africa.

So skip this book and if anyone knows a more recent book on SFP and education, please let me know.

Summary of SFP: This is when a person affects a person because of their beliefs about them. The process that happens is that the person forms a belief that creates an expectation. They then act on this expectation that then influences the other person UNLESS that other person resists and the actions occur over time. Over time the other person's behavior will conform to that belief.