Profecía auto cumplida: Robert K, Merton
Una profecía autocumplida o autorrealizada es una predicción que, una vez hecha, es en sí misma es la causa de que se haga realidad.1
Se pueden encontrar ejemplos de profecías que se autorrealizan en la literatura universal, ya en la antigua Grecia y en la antigua India, pero es en el siglo XX cuando la expresión es acuñada por el sociólogo Robert K. Merton, quien formalizó su estructura y sus consecuencias. En su libro Teoría social y estructura social, Merton da la siguiente definición:
La profecía que se autorrealiza es, al principio, una definición «falsa» de la situación que despierta un nuevo comportamiento que hace que la falsa concepción original de la situación se vuelva «verdadera».
Historia
El concepto de Robert K. Merton de profecía que se autorrealiza deriva del teorema de Thomas, que dice que:
if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.
Si una situación es definida como real, esa situación tiene efectos reales.
En otras palabras, la gente no reacciona simplemente a cómo son las situaciones, sino también, y a menudo principalmente, a la manera en que perciben tales situaciones, y al significado que le dan a las mismas. Por tanto, su comportamiento está determinado en parte por su percepción y el significado que atribuyen a las situaciones en las que se encuentran, más que a las mismas. Una vez que una persona se convence a sí misma de que una situación tiene un cierto significado, y al margen de que realmente lo tenga o no, adecuará su conducta a esa percepción, con consecuencias en el mundo real.
Ejemplos
En la novela Traficantes de dinero de Arthur Hailey, se da un caso paradigmático de profecía autocumplida. Una campaña de activismo cívico para presionar a un banco comienza con los rumores (no necesariamente verídicos) de que ese banco está próximo a quebrar. La gente se dirige en masa a retirar sus depósitos alarmada por el rumor, de modo que el banco, por estas retiradas masivas de efectivo, comienza a acercarse de verdad a la quiebra profetizada por aquel rumor.
Otro ejemplo claro es el referido en el libro "Critica de la pasión pura", donde se narra el caso de un líder africano cuyo hermano murió en un accidente de tránsito:
Cuando era más joven, una bruja había predicho que él o bien su hermano iban a morir pronto. Antes de un mes, N. cayó enfermo y poco después su hermano tuvo un accidente automovilístico. Y murió. Cuando terminó su historia, N. me miró como un profesor que acaba de demostrar un teorema y mira a su alumno tratando de ver si ha comprendido.
Con mi expresión más occidental, dije: «Bueno, ¿y dónde está la prueba?». Alguien que estaba a mi lado suspiró molesto; no era posible que alguien tuviese tantas dificultades para entender una prueba irrefutable. «Yo no veo la prueba -insistí-; lo único que veo es un crimen inducido». Creo que mis amigos optaron por cambiar de tema cuando notaron que los puntos de vista se habían radicalizado demasiado. Pero veámoslo desde un punto de vista psicológico, que si no es el mejor tampoco ha de ser peor que la interpretación mágica.
Consideremos que, después de la revelación, tanto N. como su hermano debieron quedar muy perturbados; sobre todo porque ambos eran africanos de pura ley y muy susceptibles ante las palabras de una adivina con fama. La enfermedad de N. debió golpear directamente a su hermano, ya que eso indicaba quién sería el mortal aludido. ¿No es éste el mejor estado psicológico para que se produzca un accidente, real o involuntario?2
Referencias
Aronson, Elliot (1972). Introducción a la psicología social (1ª edición). EE.UU.: Alianza Editorial. p. 155.
Crítica de la pasión pura. Cap. XIII. Obsesiones de la verdad.
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Self-fulfilling prophecy
Part of a series on Psychology
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. A positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or delusion—declared as truth when it is actually false—may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is effected in behavioral confirmation effect, in which behavior, influenced by expectations, causes those expectations to come true.[1]
It is complementary to the self-defeating prophecy. Examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression "self-fulfilling prophecy" and formalizing its structure and consequences. In his 1948 article Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Merton defines it in the following terms:
The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.[2]
History of the concept
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Merton's concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy stems from the Thomas theorem, which states that "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences".[3] According to Thomas, people react not only to the situations they are in, but also, and often primarily, to the way they perceive the situations and to the meaning they assign to their perceptions.[4][citation needed] Therefore, their behavior is determined in part by their perception and the meaning they ascribe to the situations they are in, rather than by the situations themselves. Once people convince themselves that a situation really has a certain meaning, regardless of whether it actually does, they will take very real actions in consequence.
Merton took the concept a step further and applied it to recent social phenomena. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, he conceives of a bank run at the fictional Last National Bank, over which Cartwright Millingville presides. It is a typical bank, and Millingville has run it honestly and quite properly. As a result, like all banks, it has some liquid assets (cash), but most of its assets are invested in various ventures. Then one day, a large number of customers come to the bank at once—the exact reason is never made clear.
Customers, seeing so many others at the bank, begin to worry. False rumors spread that something is wrong with the bank, and more customers rush to the bank to try to get some of their money out while they still can. The number of customers at the bank increases, as does their annoyance and excitement, which in turn fuels the false rumors of the bank's insolvency and upcoming bankruptcy, causing more customers to come and try to withdraw their money.
At the beginning of the day—the last one for Millingville's bank—the bank was not insolvent. But the rumor of insolvency caused a sudden demand of withdrawal of too many customers, which could not be answered, causing the bank to become insolvent and declare bankruptcy. Merton concludes this example with the following analysis:
The parable tells us that public definitions of a situation (prophecies or predictions) become an integral part of the situation and thus affect subsequent developments. This is peculiar to human affairs. It is not found in the world of nature, untouched by human hands. Predictions of the return of Halley's comet do not influence its orbit. But the rumored insolvency of Millingville's bank did affect the actual outcome. The prophecy of collapse led to its own fulfillment.[5]
Merton concluded that the only way to break the cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy is by redefining the propositions on which its false assumptions are originally based.[citation needed]
In economic "expectations models" of inflation, peoples' expectations of future inflation lead them to spend more today and demand higher nominal interest rates for any savings, since they expect that prices will be rising. This demand for higher nominal interest rates and increased spending in the present, in turn, create inflationary pressure and can cause inflation even if the expectations of future inflation are unfounded.[citation needed] The expectations theory of inflation played a large role in Paul Volcker's actions during his tenure as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve in combating the "stagflation" of the 1970s.[citation needed]
Philosopher Karl Popper called the self-fulfilling prophecy the Oedipus effect:
One of the ideas I had discussed in The Poverty of Historicism was the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted. I had called this the "Oedipus effect", because the oracle played a most important role in the sequence of events which led to the fulfillment of its prophecy. … For a time I thought that the existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the social from the natural sciences. But in biology, too—even in molecular biology—expectations often play a role in bringing about what has been expected.[6]
An early precursor of the concept appears in Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment" (chapter I, part II).
Applications
Examples abound[example needed] in studies of cognitive dissonance theory and the related self-perception theory; people will often change their attitudes to come into line with what they profess publicly.[7][citation needed]
Teacher expectations influence student academic performance.[8][9]:114 In the United States, the concept was broadly and consistently applied in the field of public education reform, following the "War on Poverty". Theodore Brameld noted: "In simplest terms, education already projects and thereby reinforces whatever habits of personal and cultural life are considered to be acceptable and dominant."[10] The effects of teacher attitudes, beliefs, and values, affecting their expectations have been tested repeatedly.[11] Students may study more if they had a positive experience with their teacher.[9]:115 Or female students may perform worse if they expected their male instructor is a sexist.[12]
The phenomenon of the "inevitability of war" is a self-fulfilling prophecy that has received considerable study.[13]
The idea is similar to that discussed by the philosopher William James as "The Will to Believe." But James viewed it positively, as the self-validation of a belief.[citation needed] Just as, in Merton's example, the belief that a bank is insolvent may help create the fact, so too, on the positive side, confidence in the bank's prospects may help brighten them.
Similarly, Stock-exchange panic episodes and speculative bubble episodes can be triggered with the belief that the stock will go down (or up), thus starting the selling/buying mass move, etc.
A more Jamesian example: a swain, convinced that the fair maiden must love him, may prove more effective in his wooing than he would have his initial prophecy been defeatist.
There is extensive evidence[where?] of "Interpersonal Expectation Effects", where the seemingly private expectations of individuals can predict the outcome of the world around them. The mechanisms by which this occurs are also reasonably well understood: it is simply that our own expectations change our behavior in ways we may not notice and correct. In the case of the "Interpersonal Expectation Effects", others pick up on non-verbal behavior, which affects their attitudes. A famous[according to whom?] example includes a study where teachers were told arbitrarily that random students were "going to blossom".[failed verification] Oddly, those random students actually ended the year with significantly greater improvements.[14][15] Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968 Other specific examples discussed in psychology include:
Darley, John M.; Gross, Paget H. (2000), "A Hypothesis-Confirming Bias in Labelling Effects", in Stangor, Charles (ed.), Stereotypes and prejudice: essential readings, Psychology Press, p. 212, ISBN 978-0-86377-589-5, OCLC 42823720
Merton, Robert K. (1948), "The Self Fulfilling Prophecy", Antioch Review, 8 (2 (Summer)): 195, doi:10.2307/4609267, ISSN 0003-5769, JSTOR 4609267
Thomas, W. I. (1928). The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 572.
"How Money Supply and Demand Determine Nominal Interest Rates". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2017-10-15.
Merton, Robert K (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. p. 477. ISBN 978-0-02-921130-4. OCLC 253949.
Popper, Karl (1976). Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography. LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court. ISBN 978-0-87548-343-6. OCLC 2927208.
Carrasco-Villanueva, M. A., El Efecto “Pricebo”: Cómo los precios pueden influenciar la percepción sobre la calidad del cannabis y sus implicaciones en las políticas de precios", Pensamiento Crítico, vol. 22, n. 2, pp 175-210
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