Independent variable
The teacher’s expectation on the
children was the independent variable. With a high hope on a specific student,
the teachers had a tendency of doing things that were favorable to the student.
As a result, influencing their performance.
Dependent variable
The performance of the students whose
names were submitted to their teacher and said that they would perform better
in the academic year ahead was the dependent variable. The performance changed
with the change in expectation from the teachers.
The control group
The control group of the study was the
children who were not labeled at all. The study marked several children as the
ones that would perform better. Therefore, the rest of the group that was not
selected became the control group of the study.
The treatment and the
treatment group
The treatment group, in this case, were
the students expected to perform better and gain intellectually in the academic
year ahead. The treatment is the expectancy effect. At the beginning of the
experiment, the teachers were given several names of students in their class
that were expected to perform better. However, they were not told that the
names were picked randomly. As a result, the teachers raised their expectations
on the children and taught differently which favored the labeled students.
An example of a
self-fulfilling prophecy
Self-fulfilling prophecies are
everywhere even in the business world. One example of the self-filling prophecy
is the macroeconomic one that happened in the 1980s in California. The media at
that time started reporting that the gas reserves in the state were running low
and would soon be unable to sustain the population. Although the reserves were
starting to run low, they could still meet the demand of the people (Hawks).
The media’s report, however, drove the
people to take some actions that would make sure that the prophecy would be
fulfilled even without them knowing. First, anyone who used gasoline for either
motor vehicle or motorcycle rushed to the nearest gas station filling their car
and any container that could hold gasoline for storage. As a result, the
prophecy came to fruition causing there to be a shortage of gas. The
artificially inflated demand for gas by the media influenced people’s behavior
which in return led to acts that would see the prophecy fulfilled. Had the
press put it right that the reserves were low but would be able to sustain the
population, the people would most likely not have reacted the way they did.
Instead, things would have continued the same way until the supply was back to
normal (Hawks).
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