Chapter 7<\/p>\n
You Better Change Your Expectations Because
\nI Will Not Change (Much) to Fit Your Expectations:
\nSelf-Verification as a Limit to Self-Fulfilling Prophecies<\/p>\n
Abstract<\/p>\n
Self-verification constitutes one reason self-fulfilling prophecies are generally not very powerful.\u00a0 Self-verification refers to the idea that people are often highly motivated to see themselves in a manner consistent with their own long-standing and deep-seated self-views. A strong self-concept, it seems, constitutes the psychological rudder that assists people in finding their own way through the potentially stormy seas of others’ expectations.\u00a0 This chapter reviews the research that has often pitted self-verification against self-fulfilling prophecy \u2013 a research that often shows that: 1) Strong motivations to self-verify seem to greatly reduce self-fulfilling prophecies; and 2) Self-verification is often at least as stronger or stronger than self-fulfilling prophecy.\u00a0 Self-verification clearly constitutes one social psychological processes that serves to limit the power of self-fulfilling prophecies and expectancy-confirming biases.<\/p>\n
EXCERPT:
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All this illness eventually took a toll on my school performance.\u00a0 My elementary school used tracking, also known as ability grouping.\u00a0 The “smartest” kids went into one class, the next group in another, and so on.\u00a0 Because I had missed so much in first and second grade, they put me one class from the bottom in third grade.\u00a0 But by third grade, my health began to improve…<\/i>
\n<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My fourth grade teacher, Mr. Sunshine … used within class grouping for spelling.\u00a0 The best spellers were placed into the top group and had to learn how to spell difficult words — typically on a 5th-7th grade level.\u00a0 The other group received 4th-5th grade words.\u00a0 Coming up off the near-bottom in third grade, Mr. Sunshine naturally placed me in the lower group.\u00a0 Although I liked Mr. Sunshine quite a lot, this annoyed me.\u00a0 I knew I could learn those tougher words.\u00a0 But Mr. Sunshine had a policy that gave me cause for hope — anyone who got three 100’s in a row on spelling tests would automatically get bumped up to the higher group.<\/i>
\nI was sure I could do it.\u00a0 My problem was … that I often make careless or thoughtless mistakes.\u00a0 So I never could quite get those three 100’s in a row.\u00a0 I might get a 100, then a 90, then a 95, then two 100s in a row, then another 95, and so on.\u00a0 But I knew I should have been in the higher group, so every time I fell short, it made me more determined to get my three 100’s in a row.
\nBut I never did.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because Mr. Sunshine eventually realized that, even without three hundreds in a row, the lower group was too easy for me.\u00a0 And moved me up…
\nHey, what happened to self-fulfilling prophecy?\u00a0 Ability grouping is often depicted as an unmitigated evil serving to create and maintain a caste-like system in which the academically rich get richer and the academically poor get poorer (e.g., J. Oakes, 1985; Rist, 1970).\u00a0 If so, they should be a great mechanism for creating self-fulfilling prophecies — just relegate low expectancy kids to the low classes and put the supposedly smart kids in the top classes, and tracking will insure the fulfillment of those expectations.\u00a0 I should have become a mediocre speller, right?\u00a0 Somehow, though, I managed to escape the near-bottom classes.\u00a0 Even so, why didn’t Mr. Sunshine’s early year low expectations fulfill themselves?\u00a0 Why didn’t my spelling skills decline, or at least improve too slowly to warrant moving up?
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I have been trying to point out throughout this book (except for Chapters 4-5), interpersonal expectations are often just not very powerful. Chapters 6-9 identify a slew of reasons why.\u00a0 One such reason is self-verification.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"