You are what you Wear: An Interactive Demonstration of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Abstract

This article presents evidence in support of an interactive classroom activity that demonstrates the self-fulfilling prophecy. After a brief description of the topic, 5 volunteers from an introductory psychology course of 81 students blindly donned one of several labeled hats (i.e., intelligent, attractive, good leader, annoying, lazy). The instructor told volunteers to treat each other in accordance with the labels while they completed a series of group tasks. During the task, volunteers acted in accordance with their label, thereby confirming the self-fulfilling prophecy. Findings indicated that the demonstration does elicit the self-fulfilling prophecy and that students' understanding of this phenomenon improves. Furthermore, students overwhelmingly reported that this demonstration was interesting and enjoyable and recommended its use in future classes.

Scholarship of Discovery and Beyond: Thinking About Multiple Forms of Scholarship and Elements of Project-Based Learning to Engage Undergraduates in Publishable Research

“…This was a project in my Psychology of Gender course when I was an undergraduate. While my demonstration was not creative enough to move to the publication phase, other students' demonstrations have been (Ganske and Hebl, 2001; Hebl and King, 2004; Knight et al, 2004; Hebl et al, 2008; Fa-Kaji et al, 2016). These types of projects facilitate learning by requiring students to take a deep dive into a topic and clearly demonstrate why the topic is relevant to the course.…”

The meta-narrative of self-fulfilling prophecy in the different research areas

“…diligence, laziness, height, weight, etc.) that created a self-fulfilling expectation for behaviour (Nelson -Klutas 2000;Hebl -King 2004;Haselhuhn et al 2013). (d) This has two dimensions: one, similarly to education and work, focused on sport expectations (Weaver et al 2016;Smith 1995); the other detected how athletes' beliefs about their peers' doping (Moston et al 2015) or parents' beliefs about their children's drinking behaviour (Madon et al 2004(Madon et al , 2013 or drug-use (Lamb -Crano 2014) could become SFPs.…”

Following Teaching of Psychology Into Middle Age

“…Otherwise, it was classified as a technique. Because they are executed within a single class period, demonstrations tend to be activities that explicate one concept such as self-fulfilling prophecy (Hebl & King, 2004) or experimental validity (Treadwell, 2008). Techniques span multiple class periods.…”