All people have experienced self-fulfilling prophecies in their lives, only in the vast majority of cases, they have not realized or did not know what exactly it was about. For example, imagine that you have a job interview, and you can predict that you will get the position thanks to the full confidence you have in yourself. Thanks to this, you do the interview great and you get the position.
But this same situation can be reversed: you can predict that it will not turn out well for you because of your lack of confidence, you do the interview badly and they dispense with you for the job.
It can also happen to you that one day you don't feel like going out and you think something bad will happen if you do it, and so it happens, in the end you have a bad time and you just want to get home and rest alone. These 'predictions' do not mean that you have powers of clairvoyance, far from it, they are simply self-fulfilling prophecies, but… what exactly are they and why do they happen?
What is a self-fulfilling prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a false prediction of a situation that unconsciously alters a person's behavior and attitude causing that 'prediction' to come true. When thinking about a result, the behavior of the actions is modeled to arrive at that exact result, although it should not necessarily have been that way.
The term "self-fulfilling prophecy" was coined by the sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1948. Therefore, a self-fulfilling prophecy refers to a belief or expectation that an individual has about a future event that manifests because the individual holds it (Good Therapy, 2015). For example, if tomorrow morning and for no apparent reason you wake up thinking that your day is going to be horrible, it is more than likely that it will be. Unconsciously you will behave in a way that will affirm your belief, you will ignore the positive that happens to you and you will amplify all the negative ... you will have an attitude that will not allow you to have a pleasant day.
The impact of our beliefs
At present, psychologists have found strong evidence of the impact that exists on our beliefs and expectations with the results that we obtain, especially when we are convinced that our predictions will manifest themselves, even when it is not necessarily consciously known that this expectation is maintained and that maintaining it conditions our own actions.
A commonly understood example of self-fulfilling prophecy in psychology is what is known as the placebo effect. This effect refers to improvements in outcomes measured even when participants received no significant treatment, which are caused by the participants' belief in the effectiveness of the 'treatment' they received.
This effect was discovered during clinical trials of the treatments, and may be so strong that new measures were established to explain its impact on the findings of an experiment. Experiments on the placebo effect have shown that a person's belief has real power over the results they get.
The concept of self-fulfilling prophecy is closely related to positive and negative thinking and the capacity of the human mind. It works based on a simple belief: the way we think influences our behavior and our actions (based on what we are thinking) which ultimately affects our performance. In simple terms, this theory works on the belief that the kinds of thoughts we feed into our minds (negative or positive) will influence us to make that happen by influencing our efforts and behaviors and ultimately making the prediction come true.
Known examples of self-fulfilling prophecies
The history of the Oedipus complex
What does the story of the Oedipus complex have to do with self-fulfilling prophecy? More than you can imagine. In this popular Greek story, Oedipus' father, Laius, is warned that one day his son will kill him. To prevent that from happening, she abandons her son and lets him die. But he was found and raised by a couple and he thought they were his real parents. One day, Oedipus also suffers a warning: he will kill his father and marry his widowed mother.
Oedipus, thinking that his adoptive parents are the real ones and does not want this misfortune to happen, leaves his home and his adoptive parents and goes to the city. There, he meets a person and ends up fighting with him. Oedipus kills this strange man and by circumstances, he marries the widow, who was actually his mother. When the mother finds out that it is her son, he commits suicide and Oedipus takes his eyes off everything that has happened and ends up wandering the streets of Greece.
Both Laius and Oedipus made sure the prophecy would manifest, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Harry Potter and Star Wars
This concept is woven as the underlying concept in many films. The most famous examples are Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series and Darth Vader from the Star Wars series. At this point, if you know both films, you may already begin to associate why we are commenting on this.
Both were told that they would be defeated and to avoid this they were determined to destroy the people affected. However, it was his efforts to destroy the people that created the conditions by which the protagonist emerged and defeated them, which makes the prophecy true.
Self-fulfilling prophecy is therefore a very strong power of our mind and actions. It is necessary to be aware to be able to use it in our favor and instead of focusing on negative conditions in our lives, it is better to focus on the positive things and consciously or unconsciously model behavior to achieve them. In this way, and almost without realizing it, you can enjoy a much fuller and more conscious life.