Setting up a scene

You're a seven years-old kid, nothing special about you, nothing bad either. At the living room your dad is wearing a Mel Gibson, sorry I meant a wife-beater, and he tells you to get him a glass of water. You head to the kitchen, fill up the glass with water to the top, meanwhile your brother looks at your mom and say "He's gonna drop it". You walk back into the living room, your mother is pretty nervous because of what your asshole brother said, so she looks at you intensely with fear in her eyes. Now you're getting nervous, you're now walking slower and all you can think about is the glass and all the things that could go wrong. You're thinking about everything that could go bad, you slip and fall, the glass slips through your sweaty hands, or Adam Sandler making a new movie, every bad possibility basically. It's getting intense and the world seizes to exist beside that glass of water, it's all you're looking at, all you're thinking about. You start thinking "Why did I fill this glass to the top like this", "Why didn't I use a cup?", and "Why didn't I use two girls to help with this cup? What? eww". Then BAM! you trip on the rug, the glass falls down, and your brother screams "HA! I told you so"

Now your brother is acting like a prophecy teller, one that tells no lies, like Jesus, Moses, prophet Mohammed, or Shakira's hips

Definition of a prophet is either someone with special power given by god or someone extremely smart bearing a big chunk of knowledge. Highly unlikely your brother is god's messenger, and considering that he's your brother, it's doubtful he's that smart. Scientifically if a theory doesn't make a prophecy that comes true then it's invalid. Scientists would pretty thrilled about a theory that explains everything without prophecies, just kidding they'd fuck you up like social justice warrior celebrities at award shows. Yeah, yeah Natalie "Here are all your male nominees" Portman. Hope that statement was worth committing career suicide for. Thanks for the uncomfortable moment.....

So theories need prophecies to be valid. And your brother didn't do that exactly. His prophecy wouldn't have happened had he not said it loudly that it made your mother nervous, which made you nervous and unaware of your surroundings that you ended up dropping the glass. Had your brother thought about you dropping the glass without saying it loud, would you have dropped the glass? Seems like no.So the prophecy was only fulfilled by it being part of the event. Like a doctor saying you'll feel a sting before sticking the needle and then you feel a sting, or a priest saying the same thing basically.

That my friends is called "self-fulfilling prophecy" which means that they're prophecies that fulfill themselves "Thanks, Sherlock". Basically if your brother was watching you on a camera far away from home, and said the same thing, nothing would've probably. Now to the important question, why didn't just start by saying that? Well, I really wanted to share Shakira's song and Emma Stone's gif.

Why am I talking about self-fulfilling prophecies? Well, its because they're practically related to everything around us. Professor Robert Rosenthal (Psychologist) points that out in his book (Pygmalion in the Classroom). For those who don't know, Pygmalion was a sculptor who made a sculpture (Duh! I know) and that sculpture was of a woman so beautiful that he wished she'd be real, anyway since it was a Greek story, it ended up with the woman becoming real, Robert would see how this applies in the classroom. So basically if you'd make an IQ test for two 3rd grade classes early in the school year, both scoring identically on the test. But you'd go and tell their teachers that class A scored way higher than class B, by the end of the year class A would do better than class B. What changed? Well, the way the teacher would conduct himself in each class. As far as the teacher goes, he was told that students in class A were much smarter, more disciplined with a strive for learning. Meanwhile the ones in class B are on the bad side, they're not disciplined, and don't care about school. So the teacher cared more about class A, forgiving them more for making mistakes as he saw that to be their limit, while being harder on class B, less forgiven and punishing them harder. End of the year the prophecy fulfilled itself by students in class A doing better than class B, everyone applauded and hailed the book forgetting the fact that he had just screwed over a whole class of 3rd graders.

Many more experiments happened as the book had over 300 experiments, including a reverse one where class A were told that their teacher is excellent and class B were told that their teacher is horrible. Those who were told their teacher is bad saw him as bad even after dealing with him for an entire year, and those who were told he's good saw him as good even though they dealt with an entire year, he's the same person!

The problem with this type of prophecies (Beside the fact that Robert Rosenthal ruined an entire year of a class of students and teacher of course) is that those prophecies can cause extreme harm. Think about it, if you were convinced that all relationships are bound to fail, you'd do everything that ensures that, just so you can say "Ha! I told you so" and then masturbate alone for the rest of your life. Not that being in relationship means that you masturbate with someone else of course. That would make relationships pretty interesting though"Hey honey, it's time for us to masturbate together", the upside of that is women would finally be satisfied with sex, what? just in my case?

That kind of prophecy can lead to having an entire chain of bad thoughts, something that is actually linked with suicide more on that on a later serious post I'm writing. Hmm can't really think of a joke here, "haha! you just killed yourself" no, not working.

In summary

Wait, what? Already? It usually takes me three years to get to the summary. In summary, self-fulfilling prophecies are a cause of many things in our daily lives. In fact, if you look at events such as cops shooting black men, you can link it to this in a way. If you're an extreme feminists that believes all men are shallow creatures who only think about with everything they do, you're bound to be single just to fulfill such prophecy. The reason psychologists are taught this is so they can tell if the case in front of them is self-caused or there's a cause and effect. You could get into reading this post with a prophecy that it will suck, and walk away with that conclusion. Or you think it will rock and walk away with that conclusion. Either way this means that if this is not your favorite post of all time, then it's probably your fault.

I nominate @traf as always to fulfill my prophecy that if he'd make a @comedyopenmic post it would be thanks to me. And also @anomadsoul to thank him for letting his vote power be used by @anouk.nox for 36 hours rather than just leave it selfishly as he travels.

Sources.

1, 2, 3, and 4