Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part because a person's belief or expectation that it would come true leads them to act in ways that bring it about, an example of the broader phenomenon of a positive feedback loop. Merely applying a label to someone or something can shape perception of it and set the prophecy in motion, with interpersonal communication playing a significant role in both establishing the expectation and reinforcing the label. American sociologists W. I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas were the first Western scholars to investigate the phenomenon, developing the 1928 Thomas theorem holding that if people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences, and the sociologist Robert K. Merton later coined the term itself and popularized the idea that a correct or incorrect belief could bring about an expected outcome.