Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

1948

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003)

In the decade after the end of World War II many urban and suburban white homeowners were worried that African Americans would move into their neighborhoods. Motivated by such fears, many white homeowners sold their homes, often below market value, as soon as a black family moved into their neighborhood, worried that having a black family in the neighborhood would decrease property values. In 1948, social scientist Robert K. Merton used this as an example of a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” As Merton noted, it was the white homeowners’ anxiety that created the very phenomenon they feared.

Earlier in the century, sociologist W. I. Thomas had written, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” It is this axiom that Merton elaborated upon to explain self-fulfilling prophecy after the war, yet the idea or principle has been recognized for millennia, from ancient Greece and India through the history of both Western and Eastern civilizations: the stories of Krishna killing his uncle Kamsa, who was told by an oracle that one of his nephews would kill him; of Oedipus killing his father, Laius, who abandoned him after being told by a seer that his son would kill him; and many others are historical examples of self-fulfilling prophecy.

The psychological processes of perception and expectation underlie the concept. How we perceive events, others, and ourselves exerts marked influence on how we respond. This in turn may directly influence the outcome of events or how others respond to us. Stereotypes may function as one variant of self-fulfilling prophecies, as can be seen in studies of stereotype threat, or the fear that one may act in a way that confirms the stereotype. For example, when asked to list race on an exam, African American students performed poorly compared to the times when they were not asked to list their race, as did female students when asked to list gender prior to taking a math exam.

SEE ALSO Contact Hypothesis (1954), Robbers Cave (1954), Stereotype Threat (1995)

Arjuna, a prince of Pandu, meets his cousin and ally, Krishna, at Prabhasakshetra in this illustration from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Krishna’s prophesized murder of his uncle, Kamsa, parallels the self-fulfilling prophecy of Oedipus.