Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

The study of psychology has lead to many interesting discoveries and realizations. One of these being self-fulfilling prophecies. Self-fulfilling prophecies are the prediction or feeling about some future event that becomes true as a result of intense belief and behaviour. While they seem quite minute, these strange little predictions actually control our society as we know it. These prophecies are not limited to influencing the small day-to-day decisions, but have such a great effect that it controls the very concept of war. The idea that war is inevitable is a highly debated topic that has much to do with self-fulfilling prophecies. The fact that we have a debate over the inevitability of something quite easily leads itself to becoming a
self-fulfilling prophecy itself. With so many possibilities for conflict it is quite difficult to avoid slipping into yet another war. A prime example of this can be seen looking back at World War I. The polarizing beliefs of countries in Europe, a continent with so many countries right next to each other, the domestic disputes, the beliefs of a small group that led to an assassination are just a few factors. In such a populated world how can we possibly share the exact same beliefs? If we cannot share exact beliefs a conflict arises that causes someone to consider a war with another nation and that conflict builds until it reaches a tipping point. We are bound to keep reaching this tipping point due to the constant vitriol and even the very debate over the inevitability of war. On slightly less of a macro scale, self-fulfilling prophecies also reach into our education systems.
We have our preconceived ideas of success in these environments and a number of influencers can play into this situation. This success is mostly impacted by the societal standards, teachers, students, and students’ families. This opens it up to many possible predictions that influence the success of a student in an educational setting. Society expects the best results from affluent areas and very little from impoverished areas. We train our youth that if you are from the minority or have little money you will be bound to repeat this cycle. Teachers can influence the success with their own predictions of how they interact with their students. Positively reinforcing the students creates a spark of hope in them and impacts behaviour and success. The families of the students have their own expectations of the students and a negative prediction of their success can cause them to achieve negative results. The standards students hold themselves to is one of the most difficult to overcome as it is wired into their brain what they believe they are capable of. All of these relationships combined are just more self-fulfilling prophecies intertwined with one another that influence whether or not a student will achieve
success. Even in micro level interactions relationships are heavily impacted by self-fulfilling prophecies. As the saying goes: we accept the love we think we deserve. The way we think about relationships has such a monumental impact on how our relationships turn out and if they even happen at all. If someone is desperately looking for the love of their life they will put on their rose-coloured glasses and blissfully find love while ignoring the issues with that relationship. The same happens with the opposite way of thinking where someone is looking for love but feel they are not deserving of it. This thought will influence their thoughts and behaviours to the point of missing out on potential love. The way we think about love and what amount of it we want and deserve can change the kind of love we find. Both on the macro and the micro level there is a societal impact of self-fulfilling prophecies. They determine possible futures for our world through worldwide political interactions and wars, the level of success our youth can achieve, and the relationships we find ourselves in. One small prediction on even an irrelevant outcome can change the world.