Self-fulfilling prophecy

• AO1

  • Self-fulfilling prophecy suggests people internalise labels and behave accordingly. 
  • A person is labelled as antisocial because of a trait they may have or due to stereotypes in respect of personal characteristics, such as gender.
  • Once they become labelled they are treated differently. 
  • Not everybody internalises the labels that people assign to them.
• WEAKNESS

  • Studies are correlational, they show a link between expectations and outcome but cause could be due to any amount of reasons.---> can't identify cause and effect
  • We cannot experimentally test the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies due to ethics. 
  • Social learning theory would suggest that it is not the belief that causes an action to happen but the choice to copy the behaviour of roles models, therefore criminal behaviour is as a result of copying rather than an internal belief system.
• STRENGTH

  • Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) found that children labelled as bloomers improved their IQ and continued to improve for the next two years, which suggests this could be true for criminal labelling. 
  • Jahoda (1954) found males born on a Wednesday had a significantly higher conviction rate (22%) than males born on a Monday (6%). as the community expected them to behave antisocially and they met that expectation
• self-fulfilling prophecy is when a person internalises the expectations / labels of others and behaves in a way that demonstrates the expected criminal behaviour
• supporting studies relating to this

  Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) & Jahoda (1954)
• Self-fulfilling prophecy is a belief that an individual holds about a future event and this belief is affirmed when it is actioned.