Psychological Theories

1. The Self-fulfilling theory

The self-fulfilling theory deals with a prediction that directly or indirectly causes it to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. In other words, it is based on the believe will come true because you will subconsciously and consciously act in ways that cause the event to happen. Self fulfilling theory was developed by Robert K. Merton, an American sociologist. It seeks to explain how a belief or expectation, whether true or not, affects the outcome of a situation or the behavior of a person or group. According to this theory, we form certain expectations of people or events and either consciously or unconsciously convey those expectations with various cues and signs, either in the way we talk or behave, that led to people adjusting their behavior to match those expectations. The result is that the original expectation becomes true (Tim, 2010). The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.[1]
In other words, a prophecy, strongly held belief, or a delusion, declared as truth when it is actually false may sufficiently influence people, either through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false belief.

This self fulfilling prophecy concept has been verified by many experiments and observations, and if we look at our own lives we can often see it happening in our lives in various situations. For example, parents who believe that their children will not do well in school tend to make it come true by reducing emphasis on the importance of school work to their children and accepting poor grades from them. On the other hand, parents who believe their children can excel in school will create a home environment suitable in promoting reading and knowledge, emphasize the importance of school work and generally will not tolerate poor grade from their kids. All these will eventually propel their children to excel in school.

In short, higher expectations lead to higher performance. Likewise, lower expectations lead to lower performance. In addition, better performance from higher expectations lead us to like someone more and poorer performance from lower expectations results in us liking someone less. Thus, not only does the self fulfilling prophecy come true, it leads to a virtuous or vicious cycle. It is especially important for parents and teachers to be aware of this phenomenon as their attitudes are often the very factor that will determine the outcome of the children they care for. Whatever the reason for your negative belief, your actions may set him up to cheat. More specifically, you may treat him with distrust and suspicion...and he'll be more likely to live up to your negative thoughts and expectations. If you refuse to believe him when he tells you the truth, he'll see no reason to stay honest. Your expectations shape your future.
The combined effect of self-fulfilling prophecies is especially significant when applied to society's beliefs about minorities or stereotyped groups. For instance, if we as a community believe that fast food is good, then our beliefs could affect our health as a society. If we believe we're raising a generation of video-game addicted spoiled children, then that's what we'll get. This is the group effect of self-fulfilling prophecies, or the synergistic accumulative effect (Laurie P.K., 2007). The theory of self-fulfilling has similarly had effects on my life both negatively and positively. For instance in my life at the university, I have always been optimistic that I can pass my exams. Before I sit for any examination or assignment, I usually believe that I can get good marks. I normally expect a pass or a credit and this has been mostly what I get once the results are out.

2. Belief in a Just World

The just-world theory is a cognitive bias that refers to the common assumption that the outcomes of situations are caused or guided by some universal force of justice, order, stability, or desert. In this theory, people tend to attribute consequences to, or expect consequences as the result of, acosmic power responsible for the righting of past wrongs, injustices, or imbalances. The premise of the fallacy popularly appears in English in the form of various figures of speech, which often imply a negative reprisal of justice, such as: "You got what was coming to you," "What goes around comes around," and "You reap what you sow." The theory is of the idea that humans need to believe that the world is a fair place where people generally get what they deserve: hard work and honesty reaps rewards, while laziness and dishonesty deserve punishment. Conversely, if we believe that the world is unjust, we would fear that our efforts and investment might be in vain and that hardworking people might never succeed. This negative assumption is not only unproductive, but also threatening and anxiety-provoking, thus we tend to defend and protect our belief in a fair and just world by either helping or blaming the victim. According to the theory, people have a strong desire or need to believe that the world is an orderly, predictable, and just place, where people get what they deserve. Such a belief plays an important function in our lives since in order to plan our lives or achieve our goals we need to assume that our actions will have predictable consequences. Moreover, when we encounter evidence suggesting that the world is not just, we quickly act to restore justice by helping the victim or we persuade ourselves that no injustice has occurred. We either lend assistance or we This first work towards the belief in this theory was conducted by Melvin J. Lerner in the early 1960’s. Since that time, research has continued, examining the predictive capacity of the hypothesis in various situations and across cultures, and clarifying and expanding the theoretical understandings of just world beliefs. Melvin has conducted a series of experiments to test this

hypothesis. In an impressive body of research, he shows how people are to convince themselves that beneficiaries deserve their benefits and victims their suffering. In a 1965 study, Melvin reported that subjects who were told that a fellow student had won a cash prize in a lottery tended to believe that the student worked harder than another student who lost the lottery. In another study a year later, Lerner and a colleague videotaped a simulated "learning" experiment in which it appeared that the "participants" were subjected to electric shocks. Lerner found that subjects who observed the videotapes tended to form much lower opinions of these "victimized" participants when there was no possibility of the victim finding relief from the ordeal, or when the victim took on the role of "martyr" by voluntarily remaining in the experiment despite the apparent unpleasantness of the experience. Lerner concluded that "the sight of an innocent person suffering without possibility of reward or compensation motivated people to devalue the attractiveness of the victim in order to bring about a more appropriate fit between her fate and her character." Neither science nor psychology has satisfactorily answered the question of why the need to view the world as just exerts such a powerful influence on human behavior and the human psyche. But the research suggests that humans have a need to bring their beliefs about what is right into conformity with the objective reality they encounter--and that they will work to achieve consistency either by modifying their beliefs or attempting to modify that reality. By becoming more conscious of our own tendencies, we may be more inclined to take the latter approach. The need to see victims as the recipients of their just deserts can be explained by what psychologists call the "Just World Hypothesis” (Claire A. & Manuel V., 2010) This theory has been useful to me in life. For instance, I have applied it since I first enrolled in school. Having been taught by my parents that it is only through hard work that I can succeed in my education and believing in that, I have endeavored to put all efforts in my studies. This has culminated in me performing well in my lower level education and I can attribute that to my successful enrolment here at USIU.

3. Construal Level Theory

The theory Construal level is one of the social psychology theories. It is used to explain the relation between psychological distance and the concreteness or abstractness of people’s thinking. According to the theory, the distance between an individual and an object affects the extent to which the person thinks about the object. If an object is far from an individual, the person will think about the object lesser as compared to an object that is closer to him. In the theory, psychological distance is defined on a number dimensions but the temporal, spatial, social and hypothetical distances are considered the most important dimensions. There is however a debate among social psychologists about further dimensions like informational, experiential or affective distance.

According to construal level theory, objects, events, or individuals can be perceived as either close or distant. According to psychologists, an object might be nearby or remote in space, an event might unfold very soon or farther in the future, it may also be likely, and thus effectively close, or hypothetical and unlikely, and thus effectively distant. I addition, an event might be experienced from the perspective of individuals themselves, and thus close, or from the perspective of an observer, and thus distant (Psychlopedia)

The theory agrees that people use increasingly higher levels of construal to represent an object as the psychological distance from the object increases. This is because high-level construals are more likely than low-level construals to remain unchanged as one gets closer to an object or farther away from it. For example, the higher level goal to contact a friend is more stable over time than the more concrete goal to send her an e-mail, because an Internet connection might be unavailable when one is actually trying to contact the friend. From a temporally distant perspective, it is therefore more useful to construe this action in terms of the high-level goal rather than the low-level goal. The same holds true for the other distances. Thus, abstract categories tend to change less across social distance. Even maintaining perceptual constancy across spatial distance requires abstraction. Identifying an object in near and distant locations as being the same requires forming an abstract concept that omits incidental features and retains essential, relatively invariant features. The use of high-level, abstract construals to

represent psychologically distal objects is thus indispensable for effective functioning in many domains: for developing object constancy, orienting in space, planning the future, learning from the past, relating to and understanding other people, and for considering alternative outcomes and courses of action (Yaacov T. & Nira L., 2010).

Construal level theory explains some important findings. For example, employees are less likely to perceive a proposed initiative as desirable, if this development could be introduced in the immediate--rather than remote—future. In addition, individuals demonstrate more self discipline, and can thus avoid temptations, after they consider why, not how, they will engage in various behaviors. Furthermore, individuals are more likely to negotiate effectively with each other-identifying an outcome that satisfies both parties-if they imagine their lives in the future or if the outcome of this dispute will not be implemented for several months.

This theory is evident in every person’s life. In my case, I find it easy to plan for occasions that will occur sooner than those that will occur a little later. For instance, weekends comes sooner than holidays during the semesters here at the university. I therefore find myself with concrete plans on how to spend the weekends than on how to spend my holidays. I normally have detailed activity plan for the weekend, have clear expectations on what I will attain during the weekend more than on the holidays. Since the holidays are quite a distance away, I am not usually sure of what I want to do at that time despite the fact that I usually have a tentative plan. On another perspective, this theory applies to my friends. Back at home I have friends whom we have grown together, schooled together and associated with for a long time. Here at the campus I have made friends whom we see each other almost on daily basis. I find myself more interested in what these campus friends are doing, what they mean to me and how it affects me more than the friends I have left back at home. Yes I have grown with them and spend most of my time with them, but by the virtue of being far away from me, I find myself thinking less about them.

4. The Actor/Observer difference

The actor-observer bias is a term in social psychology that refers to a tendency to attribute one's own action to external causes, while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes. According to the theory, people tend to make different attributions depending upon whether they are the actor in a situation or the observer. This theory explains how an individual will try to justify his actions (playing the role of the actor) while criticizing the actions of others (playing the observer role). The actor-observer bias is more pronounced where the outcomes of the actions are negative. The actor-observer bias tends to be more pronounced in situations where the outcomes are negative. For example, in a situation where a person experiences something negative, the individual will often blame the situation or circumstances. When something negative happens to another person, people will often blame the individual for their personal choices, behaviors and actions.

Researchers have found that people tend to succumb to this bias less frequently with people they know well, such as close friends and family members. Because we have more information about the needs, motivations and thoughts of these individuals, we are more likely to account for the external forces that impact behavior.

The actor-observer bias works in conjunction with Heider’s attribution theory. The actor-observer bias shows the idea that people are more likely to make internal attributions while acting as observers and to make external attributions about their own behavior.

Actors are more likely to use external reasoning because of several cognitive functionings. Firstly, because actors are not able to observe their own behavior directly, they emphasize the importance of the situation in the reasoning behind their actions. Because of the observer’s ability to directly watch the behavior of the other person, they are not as influenced by situational factors. Storm concocted a study in which the actors were shown a videotape of their behavior in a situation. Now the actors were able to judge their own behavior from an outside perspective as well. With the introduction of this variable, actors actually made fewer situational (external) attributions than observers.

Another reason for this divergence is that actors can judge their own behavior as a result of history, context, and other experiences. Because of this information, actors are more likely to view their own actions as the effects of the situation rather than an indication of their disposition. But without entering the situation with previous knowledge, observers tend to view the person’s behavior as a “manifestation” of their personality, not as influenced by the situational context. This assertion is supported by evidence from a study in which observers watched a participant from an observation room and a videotape before making causal attributions. When participants were given access to more information about how a person usually acts in a situation, they made less internal attributions. In addition to cognitive factors, several motivational factors influence the actor observer bias. People strive to maintain a positive image of themselves, so they credit themselves with internal attributions when successful and external factors when they fail.

According to psychologist Sande, Goethals, and Radloff, the reason behind this bias is that people tend to see themselves as more complex and multi-faceted than others. It is not that they believe the situation as necessarily more powerful in influencing their behavior than it would other people’s, but that because there are more factors, both external and internal, that are affecting their behavior, there are more reasons behind their actions. People tend to see their behavior as having more reasons behind it than other people’s behaviors because people think they are more complex than others are (psychwiki.com).

The Theory of Self-reference

The self-reference theory is based on the self-reference effect which the tendency of people to encode information differently depending on the level on which the self is implicated in the information. When people are asked to remember information when it is related in some way to the self, the recall rate can be improved.

According to Banaji & Prentice, the self is a central construct that colors the way people perceive, think, and act. It is a central construct that shows the way people perceive, think, and act. The self can be explained by a wide assortment of psychological phenomena like the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving biases. These phenomena explain the variations on the basic theme that self-relevant information is processed differently than other types of social information. The self-reference effect in memory refers to the finding that materials are remembered better if they have been encoded in a self-relevant way than if they have not. According to a number of studies carried out, self-referent encoding has an advantage over other types of encoding, with an average effect size of 0.50 In addition to personality traits, the self-relevance effect has been shown in memory for nouns.

Human beings construct meaning. They use meaning and complexes of meaning to understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us. People can coordinate their expectations, beliefs, and actions socially by sharing meaning or a complex structure of meaning, e.g. a world-view, paradigm, theory, an interpretation, or a proposition. When everybody in a given population shares an interpretation we call it culture. Meaningfulness is a pragmatic condition not only for sharing an inter-subjective understanding, but also for motivating collective action. In order to have socially robust norms and knowledge we must not only share meaning, it must also be meaningful and valid somehow in order to be useful. Philosophy has taught us that we in principle can justify and validate by establishing an introspective or intuitive relation to our own thoughts, by establishing a relation to objects in the world, or by establishing a linguistic relation to other linguistic constructs of meaning. In a pragmatic perspective all explicit justification is justifying a proposition by other propositions (Bordum A.)

In a linguistic-pragmatic perspective all references are made in the form of a proposition stating the existence of such a relationship, which accordingly may exist or not, be true or not, or be useful or not, depending on which kind of rationality test we apply. Making such a reference explicit is making it socially accessible. Making it explicit is establishing a meaningful reference or inference. Making it socially accessible presupposes shared meaning. We have as human beings the ability to refer to a range of things including our thoughts, each other, symbols, concepts, constructs of meanings, and objects. Without the ability to make references our world as we know it would collapse. Lacking the ability to refer, we would e.g. have a problem of interpreting, remembering, and conceptualizing the world. In fact, the ability to refer is a presupposition of our having a directed consciousness and a language. The phenomenon of referring is fundamental to subjective thought processes and intersubjective communication. The ability to establish a reference precedes the ability to share it as more or less semantically fixed. When we reflect on linguistic behavior in language a kind of pragmatic self-reference is established, this is because we cannot escape the medium, but are always already situated within it.

This theory has been applicable in part of my life. Having clearly established that people remember things better when they are relevant to them, I have always tried to make myself relevant to friends. This is aimed at making a strong impression of myself in their lives. Friends form an important part of a person’s life; they provide shoulders to lean on in times of difficulties, they provide a platform for sharing ones happiness and sorrows; in simple terms friends make one’s life complete. To maintain friends however is not that easy and one has to be relevant to them. To attain this relevance, I have tried to be there for my friends whenever they need me, I have sought to have consult and advice them in whenever they seek my opinion. All this is intended to show them that I am one person they need to have in their lives.

References

Bordum A. The Theory of Positive Self-Reference. Retrieved on 15th July 2012

from http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhb/cbslpf/2002_010.html

Claire A. & Manuel V., 2010. The Just World Theory. Retrieved on 15th July 2012 from

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n2/justworld.html

Laurie P.K., 2007. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in Psychology. Retrieved on 15th July 2012 from

http://suite101.com/article/selffulfilling-prophecies-a15843

Psychlopedia. Construal level theory. Retrieved on 20th July 2012 from http://www.psych-

it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=79

psychwiki.com. The Actor- Observer Bias. Retrieved on 15th July 2012

from http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/The_Actor-_Observer_Bias

Tim, 2010. The Psychology of a Self Fulfilling Prophesy. Retrieved on 15th July 2012

from http://mindscience101.com/?p=234

Yaacov T. & Nira L., 2010. Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance. Retrieved on

17th July 2012 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3152826/

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