Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: (psychology term), is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior.
It is simply that our own expectations change our behaviour in ways we may not notice and correct. In the case “Interpersonal Expectation Effects”, others pick up on non-verbal behaviour which affects their attitudes. A famous example includes a study where teachers were told arbitrarily that random students were “going to blossom”. Oddly, those random students actually ended the year with significantly greater improvements. (Wikipedia)
I recently asked myself ‘Why can’t language learners like members at LingQ apply this concept to language learning?’… embed in our minds that we will also blossom like in the example above. Leave your thoughts to what everyone thinks about this in a response!
I don’t know what everyone thinks about this, but I think there may well be quite a few people using the “personal expectation effect” to great advantage. No doubt, there are others who use it against themselves.
I’ve been using LingQ on and off for over a year and have learnt a lot from, and about, the attitude of various learners. I like being reminded of possibilities.
The logical converse of a self-fulfilling prophecy is a self-destroying prophecy. For example, if you were flattered too much, you might lose interest in improving your English.