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| - "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy" is the ninth episode of Season Seven of Criminal Minds.
- Whenever anyone tries to avert a prophecy, for good or ill, the end result of their actions is to bring the prophecy about. The harder he struggles to prevent it, the more inescapable his destiny becomes. Fate, it seems, loves irony. Strangely, the other side of this, where the prophecy is fulfilled because someone wants to fulfill it, is rarely explored in fiction. Examples of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy include:
- A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression "self-fulfilling prophecy" and formalizing its structure and consequences. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton defines self-fulfilling prophecy in the following terms: e.g. when Roxanna falsely believes her marriage will fail, her fears of such failure actually cause the marriage to fail.
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| abstract
| - A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression "self-fulfilling prophecy" and formalizing its structure and consequences. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton defines self-fulfilling prophecy in the following terms: e.g. when Roxanna falsely believes her marriage will fail, her fears of such failure actually cause the marriage to fail. The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour 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. In other words, a positive or negative prophecy, strongly held belief, or delusion—declared as truth when it is actually false—may sufficiently influence people so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy.
- "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy" is the ninth episode of Season Seven of Criminal Minds.
- Whenever anyone tries to avert a prophecy, for good or ill, the end result of their actions is to bring the prophecy about. The harder he struggles to prevent it, the more inescapable his destiny becomes. Fate, it seems, loves irony. Strangely, the other side of this, where the prophecy is fulfilled because someone wants to fulfill it, is rarely explored in fiction. When a hero tries to prevent the prophesied release of an ancient evil, his actions will help it escape because You Can't Fight Fate. When the Big Bad tries to slaughter all the members of a given people in order to kill the one among them who is prophesied to end him, he will only manage to create the hero that he fears, Because Destiny Says So. One common mechanism for this is a Prophecy Twist. If no one understands the real meaning of the prophecy, any attempts to avert it will naturally be futile. A cynic will point out that by this measure, a prophecy must be vague. Otherwise it would be easy to defeat, or else those it affects must carry an Idiot Ball and not take the direct approach that would have no room for failure. The archetypal Older Than Feudalism example is the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex. A prophecy says the king will be killed by his own son, so the king orders his infant son killed. (He has him crippled and abandoned in the wilderness, instead of just breaking his neck.) Oedipus is rescued, and brought up not knowing he's the prince. Twenty years later he learns his fate: he will kill his father and marry his mother. Wanting to protect his adoptive family -- who he believes are his natural parents -- Oedipus leaves home. On the road, he doesn't recognize his father, gets into an argument, and kills him. Shortly thereafter he comes to the city his father ruled, and frees them from the Sphinx; as a reward Oedipus is made king of the city and marries the widowed queen...his own mother. Most of the real-world prophecies that come true are also self-fulfilling -- simply stating that something will happen often ensures that it will happen someday, whether by accident or because someone read your prophecy and decided he'd make it happen. An example sometimes given is that a prediction that a bank may become insolvent (or, excuse the pun, "bankrupt") may scare people into withdrawing their money from the bank all in a rush -- but since the bank only keeps a fraction of their deposits actually on hand (the rest is invested out, e.g. bank loans), the run on the bank can drive the bank into insolvency, ironically just as predicted. In simpler terms, fear that a certain commodity (like gasoline) will run short may trigger people to stock up on it, leading to a shortage of that very commodity. Then there's plain old paranoia, which is a good way to make enemies. Compare Prophetic Fallacy, Nice Job Breaking It, Herod, The Firefly Effect, Streisand Effect, and Nice Job Breaking It, Hero and/or Nice Job Fixing It, Villain (depending on who did it). Often an integral part of Tragedy. May cause a Clingy MacGuffin. For the Time Travel version, see You Already Changed the Past and Stable Time Loop. See also Situational Irony. Examples of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy include:
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