A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. OK, I know you are wondering why would someone write a post JUST for that. A self fulfilling prophecy or SFP for those that love acronyms is one of the most pervert phenomena of human psychology and by saying pervert we do not mean just spanking here: we are talking about the full Marquis de Sade book collection -- including the poems that he wrote in class.
When I first came across this phenomenon, I thought that it was a big joke. For a geek like me, these kind of phenomena are like stories about trolls and fairies. However, when I examined my life a bit closer, I had one of those jaw-dropping-AHA! moments when I realised that most of my social mistakes could have been avoided, if someone had explained me what an SFP was.
This phenomenon uses a feedback loop with the environment and it usually takes place like this:
Maria meets Jena and for some reason that has nothing to do neither with reason nor with logic, she decides that Jena won't like her. Watch out who likes whom because this is where the key lies. Jena likes Maria but Maria thinks that Jena doesn't like her.
Now, here comes the hidden-hat-trick part. As Maria thinks that Jena doesn't like her, she is not as positive or as friendly as she would normally be. Her non verbal cues are a bit more ... indifferent: she avoids eye contact and she doesn't smile a lot.
Now.... here comes the feedback fairy that takes away the cookie from Maria and anybody else that makes this kind of mistake. Jena, apart from her taste for men, she makes no mistakes and she sees what happens immediately. As far as it concerns Jena it is crystal clear, more clear than a summer morning:
Jena.... that bitch ... doesn't like her, if you pardon my french.
Now, the feedback fairy pays a visit to Maria who sees that CLEARLY Jena is even more cold than usual. The feedback fairy then uses her magic rod that has written on it : "Cognitive dissonance: Making people ignore cues that don't confirm their beliefs, since 1957". She then decides that definitely Jena must not like her and in order to pay her back, she no longer likes her either.
Then, our fairy leaves Jena and Mary rolling down the hill ... and flies to another social situation in search of more fun, beers and free cookies.
Bad advices
An SFP is also one of the biggest reasons why people who are naturally good with social skills usually give such a bad advices. I've talked so many times to men that are good with women and they believe that it is because they have money or because they have expensive cars. Then, as they approach women all confident and cocky, women turning up liking them and the prophecy confirms itself. However, when their friends ask them for some advice, they answer: "Well, a good car and a fat wallet always attracts the ladies, Joe". And Joe spends the rest of his life hunting money like Scarface:
In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the
money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the
women.
Yeah, right. This kind of advice can be found everywhere around and makes you end up with all kind of funny ideas about what really makes the world spin. I guess this is how we ended up with that crazy theory of the world being flat and sitting on the back of four elephants, who stand on the back of a huge turtle. On a wonderful book about human psychology, Judith DeLozier and John Grinder presented a quite interesting story:
Bertrand Russell once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." Russell gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
How can I use this to get more social cookies ?
The idea that really moved me was that in order to achieve something -- anything -- you only have to assume that you are about to have it. In social applications this has some very interesting results:
- If you believe that people like you -- even if it is not objectively true -- people will tend to like you because your whole behavior will come from that place of friendliness. Feedback fairy doing loops here.
- If you are a man and you believe that women want you, after some time THIS will become your reality and women WILL start liking you. There is no magic here. It is all feedback engineering: Feedback fairy doing back flips here.
- If you assume that you are attractive, your brain will make whatever is possible to confirm this belief. As a result you will end up being more attractive. Feedback fairy looking you through the mirror.
Be very careful what do you choose to believe - because it can come out true.
If for some random reason you had a bad start in your life and you did not make a lot of friends, it is possible that you consider other people unfriendly. Well, guess what. It does not matter what the other people really are like. Unless you really start to change, those 'victim' beliefs of yours will MAINTAIN this reality in your life, feeding the feedback fairy and starting a new negative circle.
This is the way our brain is functioning: It is programmed to lock on to beliefs, in order to protect us from changing ideas all the time. This mechanism is called cognitive dissonance and it is the reason why there are people believing in things like UFOs, the jackpot or the Pope. The more you try to move those people away from those beliefs, the more chances are that you will get a slap in the face.
*SLAP*
You know something ? If those beliefs make you happy and help you live a happy life, do yourself a favor and stick with them. My granny lived through extreme poverty, two wars, a husband that did not have a stable job and STILL managed to bring up her five children with ease, while others would have snapped under stress. She has survived to see more than 15 grandchildren and 8 grand-grand-children playing. When you hug her and ask her what her secret is, she smiles and tells you: "My grandson I BELIEVE in GOD. I ALWAYS BELIEVED that GOD would be there for me. That is what made me be a fighter"
From the above, two very simple ideas are produced:
Whatever you believe, will come trueif the proper feedback loops are there.
Whenever you decide to change FAKE IT 'TILL YOU MAKE IT.
NO, No. I do not like this...
So, what? Does this always work ? Well, actually one could argue that if you manage to REALLY examine some social situations, you can really find what makes the world spin and not rely on SFP in order to get things done. However, unless you are a social psychologist working with control groups and a lot of data from experiments, do not expect this world to reveal its secret so easily. Your data will remain biased no matter how smart or 'observative' you may be. Now, if you think that SFP is something isolated you should know that it has been validated by many psychologists and it is also knows as the Placebo effect, Pygmalion effect and under many other cool, geeky names ...
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We may write in English but no one in this site is a native English speaker.Hey Jim? How do you spell New York, Jim?
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