Self-Defeating Prophecy

A self-defeating prophecy, sometimes called a self-destroying or self-denying prophecy, is the complementary opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy: a prediction that prevents the very outcome it predicts from happening, also known as the prophet's dilemma. It can arise when the audience for a prediction has an interest in seeing it proven false and the prediction's fulfillment depends on their own actions, so that their response to hearing it makes the predicted outcome less likely; a prediction made deliberately with this effect in mind is commonly called reverse psychology or a warning. A self-defeating prophecy is distinct from a self-fulfilling prophecy that happens to predict a negative outcome: if a group predicts it cannot reach a goal and stops trying as a result, its own prophecy has fulfilled itself, but if a negative prediction instead provokes a response that produces a positive outcome, that is a self-defeating prophecy.