Most discussions of self-fulfilling prophecies are about the harmful effects of negative stereotypes. We are all aware, for example, of the tragic consequences of the belief by police that young black men are more violent than other young men. But stereotypes can be positive as well as negative.

Two sociologists, Drs. Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, propose that positive stereotypes can become self-fulfilling prophecies that boost the academic achievement of Asian-American children. For their book, The Asian American Achievement Paradox, they interviewed 140 adult children of Chinese, Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants, and surveyed 4780 second generation immigrants. (This post is based on an article by Dr. Lee about their findings.)

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a behavioral sequence in which an initially false definition of a situation elicits behavior which causes the false expectation to be confirmed. The effects of self-fulfilling prophecies on classroom teachers was originally demonstrated in a 1968 experiment by Rosenthal and Jacobson in which teachers were told that a randomly-selected 20% of their incoming students showed unusual potential for academic growth. The researchers manipulated a positive expectation, since it would have been unethical to manipulate a negative one. In this segment from an old instructional video, Robert Rosenthal discusses his studies of teacher expectancy effects. The narrator is Phil Zimbardo.

A successful self-fulfilling prophecy involves five steps. In what follows, I’ll use the terms perceiver to refer to the person who forms the expectation, in this case, a teacher or guidance counselor, and target to refer to the person about whom the prediction is made, in this case, an Asian-American student.

1. The perceiver forms an expectation. Based on previous experience or hearsay, the perceiver comes to believe that most Asian-American children are intelligent.

2. The perceiver acts on the basis of that expectation. The target receives favorable treatment. He or she may be given more opportunities to perform well, or more informative feedback. Dr. Lee cites examples of Asian-American students with mediocre records who were surprised to be assigned to advanced placement courses.

3. The target responds to the perceiver’s behavior. Dr. Lee reports that the majority of Asian-American students responded to these better opportunities and increased competion by performing well. Thus, the teachers’ expectations received behavioral confirmation.

4. The perceiver interprets the target’s responds. “Aha!” they say, “I was right. Asian students really are smart.” Teachers typically overlook the role that their own behavior played in confirming their expectations.

5. The target interprets his or her own actions. The Asian-American students observe their own performance and they also conclude that they are intelligent. This is the ultimate irony of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Targets wind up attributing to themselves the very qualities that the perceiver erroneously expected.

This seems like a benign outcome. But the researchers also interviewed Mexican-American children and observed the opposite side of the coin. Only 86% of their Mexican-American students graduated from high school, and a mere 17% graduated from college. If you work through the above five steps substituting a negative stereotype of Mexican-American children, you’ll see how self-fulfilling prophecies can contribute to a vicious cycle of prejudice and discrimination.

Of course, you can’t prove that self-fulfilling prophecies play a causal role in the achievement of Asian-American children just by doing interviews or surveys. However, Lee and Zhou’s claims are credible in light of past research.

The authors are not suggesting that self-fulfilling prophecies are the only reason for high achievement among Asian-American children. They also attribute their success to the cultural values of their parents, enhanced by U.S. immigration policies which gave preference to more highly educated Asians.

Dr. Lee also points out that the minority of Asian-American students who are unable to meet their parents’ and teachers’ high expectations suffer from lower self-esteem than they would have had they not been expected to do well. Also on the negative side, the stereotype that Asians are better followers than leaders may impose a “bamboo ceiling” on Asian-American advancement in the business world, which may explain why they are underrepresented among CEOs.