This research examined whether self-fulfilling prophecy effects are mediated by self-verification, informational conformity, and modeling processes. The authors examined these mediational processes across multiple time frames with longitudinal data obtained from two samples of mother -child dyads (N 1 = 487; N 2 = 287). Children's alcohol use was the outcome variable. The results provided consistent support for the mediational process of self-verification. In both samples and across several years of adolescence, there was a significant indirect effect of mothers' beliefs on children's alcohol use through children's self-assessed likelihood of drinking alcohol in the future. Comparatively less support was found for informational conformity and modeling processes as mediators of mothers' self-fulfilling effects. The potential for self-fulfilling prophecies to produce long lasting changes in targets' behavior via self-verification processes are discussed. KeywordsSelf-fulfilling prophecies; Self-verification; Informational conformity; Modeling; Adolescent alcohol use The Mediation of Mothers' Self-Fulfilling Effects on Their Children's Alcohol Use: Self-Verification, Informational Conformity and Modeling ProcessesSocial psychological theory proposes that people can construct social reality through the process of a self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when one person (a perceiver) causes her or his false belief about another person (a target) to become true (Merton, 1948). There is broad consensus within the social psychological literature that this process necessarily involves three core, sequential events (Darley & Fazio, 1980;Harris & Rosenthal, Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stephanie Madon, W112 Lagomarcino Hall, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011. Electronic mail may be sent to madon@iastate.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/journals/psp. E. E. Jones, 1986;Jussim, 1986;Snyder, 1984). First, a perceiver must hold a false belief about a target. For example, a teacher may overestimate a student's ability, believing that the student is more capable than the student really is. Second, the perceiver's false belief must be communicated to the target by way of the perceiver's behavior toward the target. A teacher who overestimates a student's ability might communicate that belief to the student by calling on that student often, spending extra time with that student, teaching that student especially difficult material, and ...
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This research examined whether self‐fulfilling prophecies and perceptual confirmation effects accumulated across people. Trios of same‐sex participants, each consisting of two interviewers and one target, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions that served to manipulate interviewers' expectations (i.e., non‐hostile vs. hostile) and the similarity of their expectations (i.e., similar vs. dissimilar) for targets. Each trio participated in an interaction in which interviewers asked targets questions. Targets' hostility during the interaction and interviewers' impressions of targets' hostility following the interaction served as the primary dependent variables. Results indicated that perceptual confirmation effects accumulated across interviewers. Even though targets' behavior during the interaction did not differ across conditions, interviewers nonetheless judged targets as more hostile when both interviewers expected targets to be hostile than when only one did. The authors discuss these findings in terms of the potential implications for those who have multiple inaccurate and unfavorable expectations held about them. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The confirmation of expectancies may result in either a self-fulfilling prophecy or perceptual bias, altering social reality. Both experimental and naturalistic findings give support for expectancy confirmation processes, but effects are typically small. The current research investigates one way in which expectancy confirmation processes may become more powerful-through the accumulation of expectancy effects across perceivers. It also investigates an implicit question found in the expectancy confirmation literature that these effects may be highly pervasive and have the potential to accumulate across perceivers who share similar false expectancies, but do not have contact with one another. There were two
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