The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
...hat name originates from an ancient myth about the sculptor Pygmalion, who sought to create an ivory statue of the ideal woman and ended up falling in love with his creation. Although that’s where the name originated, a better (and more modern) illustration of the Pygmalion effect is George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, in which Professor Henry Higgins insists that he can take a Cockney flower girl and, with the proper training, pass her off as a duchess. He succeeds in doing so with Eliza Doolittle, but an important point lies in Eliza’s comment to Higgins’ friend Pickering: You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will. (Shaw 107). The self-fulfilling prophecy maintains that "what you expect is what you get," and Eliza Doolittle’s words to Pickering illustrate a fact that tends to hold true for all of us, which is that often, we become what we are expected to become. There are two types of self-fulfilling prophecies. The first kind are those that are self-imposed, where the expectations come from ourselves. When our own expectations influence our behavior, that is a self-imposed prophecy. Once an expectation is set, even if it isn’t accurate, we tend to act in ways that are consistent with that expectation. Surprisingly often, the result is that the expectation comes true. Not consciously, but through the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy we gather the people and situations that confirm our core beliefs about ourselves. A fairly common example of a self-imposed prophecy is when people say, “Oh, I’m not good with names!” Because part of their self-concept is that they’re not good with names, they have a much great likelihood of not remembering the names of people they meet, because they behave as if they aren’t going to be able to remember. The second type of self-fulfilling prophecy is where the expectations come from others, or where the expectations of others influence one’s actions. For instance, a teacher treats a student as if he were int...