Examples of meta narrative11/22/2023 organisational/market/country expectations for failure/success, etc.) – that can be still traced back to persons. one’s expectations for their own or for another’s failure/success), as well as to describe impersonal, objectified things (e.g. It is known to explain intra- and interpersonal processes (i.e. Originating from the latter, SFP is mainly used to highlight the human–social aspects of phenomena/events/outcomes. Galatea, Golem and Pygmalion effect) have infiltrated into academia, including both natural and social sciences. Ironically, from that time, the amount of research focusing on SFP has increased. 3 In parallel, scholars disputed the “methodological pitfalls” and ethical questions of experiments investigating SFP from the beginning (e.g. For that reason, Hensel also urged a “delineation of scope and limits” which were essential for empirical investigations, particularly in natural science, and outlined its boundaries by a set of social phenomena that were “impervious to the SFP” ( Hensel 1982: 517–8). It was already a “major phenomenon that demands attention” ( Hensel 1982: 513). By 1982, Hensel had detected eight major areas of SFP research: deviant behaviour and social control economics education models of ‘human nature’ as self-fulfilling politics, law, and international relations race and ethnic relations religion scientific inquiry. 2 Despite the critics and warnings, scientists used Merton’s definition at will, treated the definition flexibly and engaged in fruitful research. As his last word, Miller added that SFP had to be recognised simply as “a species of hypothesis” that could appear in human discourses in general, including “natural and mathematical sciences”, but most appropriately and commonly in the social sciences ( Miller 1961: 50). He pointed out that since SFP is “by definition, false”, it cannot reflect logical or scientific thinking, and highlighted that it could only be a hypothesis to label a prediction or situation as false when it is evoking without “conclusive evidence”. And instead of considering that men can do the work, Merton (1948: 507) states that “it is the self-fulfilling prophecy that goes far toward explaining the dynamics of ethnic and racial conflict in the America of today” – which idea could take the responsibility off the people’s shoulders and endow the concept with an unreal autonomy.Įarly in 1961, Miller argued that SFP had to be judged by “its malicious or unfortunate use but by its inherent structure” ( Miller 1961: 50), and claimed to restrict its scopes that were “disarmingly simple” and had “no place in scientific methodology as conceived by” Merton ( Miller 1961: 46). In the mentioned examples, that new assumption could be generated by “appropriate institutional” or “deliberate social” changes, revealing facts and the truth to people who were holding on misbeliefs based on “spurious evidence” and “self-hypnosis through one’s own propaganda”. In his view, the “tragic” and “vicious circle” of SFP can be broken by abandoning the original assumption that put the prophecy into operation, by contrasting it with a new one that shows the original to be just a lie. “in the absence of deliberate institutional controls” ( Merton 1948: 521). To support his idea, Merton brought examples in which he regarded SFP led by fears, causing bankruptcy, neurosis, racism/stigmatisation, warfare, etc. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation, evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. Merton’s definition ( 1948: 506), building on the Thomas theorem ( Thomas – Thomas 1928) 1, was already enough broad:
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