Fluent Essays

A good friend of yours has just met someone she thinks you would really like; she claims you and this new person have much in common and wants to arrange a lunch meeting. Because you trust your friend’s judgment, you agree to lunch. How might your lunch meeting unfold? For this Discussion, you will analyze the effect of self-fulfilling prophecies on education, careers, and relationships.  To Prepare Think of a time when you expected a new acquaintance to act a particular way. Review the Learning Resources for this week and consider how self-fulfilling prophecies could affect your own education, career, and relationships.  Post a description of how your expectations might influence your behavior toward a new acquaintance. Explain whether a self-fulfilling prophecy made it more likely the new acquaintance would be just the kind of person you had expected him or her to be. Explain the implications of the self-fulfilling prophecy for your own education, career(s), and relationships.   Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the social psychology theory and research. In addition to the Learning Resources, search the Walden Library and/or Internet for peer-reviewed articles to support your post and responses. Use proper APA format and citations, including those in the Learning Resources.    Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. M., & Sommers, S. R. (Eds.). (2019). Social psychology (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Chapter 3, “Social Cognition: How We Think About the Social World”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTYvd7e1JbEThe Accumulation of Stereotype-Based Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Stephanie Madon Iowa State University Lee Jussim Rutgers University Max Guyll Iowa State University Heather Nofziger and Elizabeth R. Salib Rutgers University Jennifer Willard Kennesaw State University Kyle C. Scherr Central Michigan University A recurring theme in the psychological literature is that the self-fulfilling effect of stereotypes can accumulate across perceivers. This article provides the first empirical support for this long-standing hypothesis. In three experiments (Ns � 123–241), targets more strongly confirmed a stereotype as the number of perceivers who held stereotypic expectations about them increased. A fourth experiment (N � 121) showed that new perceivers judged targets according to the stereotypic behaviors they had previously been channeled to adopt, an effect that even occurred among perceivers who were privy to the fact that targets’ behavior had been shaped by the actions of others. The authors discuss ways in which these effects may contribute to group inequalities. Keywords: accumulation, behavioral confirmation, self-fulfilling prophecy, stereotypes Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000142.supp New Look in Perception of the 1940s and 1950s initiated a revolution in approaches to perception within social psychology. Departing from the prevailing view that perception is veridical, New Look in Perception research promoted the idea that percep- tion is influenced by the goals, needs, and motives of perceivers. An influential perspective that emerged from this movement was a weak form of social constructionism. According to this perspec- tive, social beliefs can alter reality and shape behavior. The self- fulfilling prophecy is central to this perspective because it involves a perceiver’s false expectation about a target initiating a sequence of events that causes the target to exhibit expectancy-consistent behavior, thereby making the initially false expectation true. This research tested a core tenet of social constructionism within social psychology—the idea that self-fulfilling prophecy effects can ac- cumulate across perceivers. Moreover, it tested this hypothesis with respect to stereotypes, which psychological theory proposes contribute to group inequalities through their cumulative self- fulfilling effects. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Their Cumulative Effects The idea that false expectations can lead to their own fulfillment originated in the writings of Merton (1948). Merton proposed that the self-fulfilling prophecy was a powerful process capable of producing profound social problems including war, economic downturns, academic underachievement, and racial disparities in employment and wealth. Research bearing on Merton’s analysis clearly supported the existence of self-fulfilling prophecies, but not the idea that self-fulfilling prophecy effects are powerful. Both experimental and naturalistic research have convStandard Form Contracts and Contract Schemas: A Preliminary Investigation of the Effects of Exculpatory Clauses on Consumers Propensity to Sue Dennis P. Stolle, M.A., J.D.,1* and Andrew J. Slain, B.S.1* This study investigated the extent to which exculpatory clauses deter consumers from pursuing their legal rights. Undergraduate participants (N=101) were presented with two written vignettes and asked to imagine themselves as a consumer harmed by a contracted for service. Participants then read a contract and responded to questions assessing their likelihood of seeking compensation and their perceptions of the contract. The presence of exculpatory clauses, the severity of the harm, and the nature of the harm were varied. The data suggest that exculpatory clauses, if read, have a deterrent effect on propensity to seek compensation. Development of a psychological definition of contract schemas and implications for legal policy are discussed. # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Behav. Sci. Law Vol. 15, 83±94 1997. No. of Figures: 0. No. of Tables: 1. No. of Refs: 27. In 1963, Stewart Macaulay asked a few empirical questions about contract law: ``What good is contract law? who uses it? when and how? (p. 55). Using survey and interview methodologies, Macaulay set out to answer those questions. Interestingly, Macaulay found that formal contract doctrine often takes a back seat to extra-legal conceptions of fair dealing and ``common honesty and decency (p. 58). Macaulays heavy reliance on empirical data was viewed by some legal scholars as contributing to the demise of traditional contract theory and doctrine. CCC 0735±3936/97/010083±12$17.50 #1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, Vol. 15, 83±94 (1997) RESEARCH REPORT * Correspondence to: either author at 1University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 209 Burnett Hall, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0308 USA. Electronic mail may be directed to the first author at [email protected] or the second author at [email protected] Dennis P. Stolle, M.A., J.D. (expected May 1997), and Andrew J. Slain, B.A., are J.D.-Ph.D. students in the Law/Psychology Program at the University Nebraska-Lincoln. The authors are grateful to professors Mark Fondacaro, Steven Penrod, Alan Tomkins, and Robert Works for their helpful suggestions and comments, and Michelle Dreesen for her assistance in collecting and coding the data. A version of this article was presented at the biennial conference of the American Psychology-Law Society, Hilton Head, South Carolina, February, 1996. This research was made possible in part by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln Warden Research Grant awarded to the first author. This article was completed while the first author was in receipt of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Fellowship. The financial support of NIMH is gratefully acknowledged. Macaulay was even dubbed the ``Lord High Executioner of the Contract is Dead School (Gilmore, 1974, p. 105