You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

by David McRaney

Research shows you are highly susceptible to this phenomenon because you are always trying to predict the behavior of others. The future is the result of actions, and actions are the result of behavior, and behavior is the result of prediction. This is called the Thomas Theorem. The sociologist W. I. Thomas postulated in 1928, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” Thomas noticed when people are trying to predict future events, they make a lot of assumptions about the present. If those assumptions are powerful enough, the resulting actions will lead to the predicted future.