National Bank

Topic is self-fulfilling prophecy. Example 1: Robert Merton in his 1948 text wrote that in 1932, the Last National Bank was solvent and the economy was sound. But, people did not understand this and panicked. When the people panicked, they pulled their money out of the bank which is what caused the bank to fail. Example 2: In 1950, Gordon Allport said that those nations who expect to go to war, in fact do go to war. Example 3: In 1956, Rose talked about how both black and whites expected the black people to fail academically (called double expectation) and indeed, the results showed the blacks failing academically. Moving up to more modern times, Example 4: in the movie, *M*A*S*H*, Hawkeye and his colleagues tell their patients that they are receiving pain-killers after their surgeries when in actuality, there was no pain-killing medicine in the pharmacy. The young wounded men, instead, were given sugar placebos but showed effects of receiving pain-killing medications. Hawkeye and his medical colleagues were in awe of how much the patients actually controlled their own pain with their minds. Example 5: Dr. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson conducted the now-famous research study called “Pygmalion experiment” in which they gave teachers groups of children labeled as “bright learners,” “average learners,” or “slower learners.” Lo and behold, test scores reflected the researchers’ labeling of those students (which was random and not based on any real measurement or scores).

Write a thoughtful essay on how you can apply this theory in your own life (personal, health, social, scholastics, career, professional, religious, spiritual, etc). Can we predict our successes and failures? How “real” is self-fulfilling prophecy? Substantiate your work with a bibliography.