To modify a well-known maxim, the fear of fear is the greatest fear of all. And why not, considering that fear immobilizes a person. Fear discourages a person from doing or not doing something. It is something that makes life less easy to live with.
A person who fears for no reason is not living at all, just existing. It is like becoming a person who is physically alive but psychologically dead. A person who fears fear is the worst kind of person.
A person's fear is usually a self-fulfilling prophesy. This means that more often than not, a person's fear becomes a reality because the one who fears unknowingly and unconsciously does things that will give rise to the prophesy and will end up fearing the thing that they fear the most.
A self-fulfilling prophesy is also called the Pygmalion effect. This came from the myth involving a sculptor named Pygmalion, who believed that there is an ideal woman and so he created an ivory statue of the ideal woman and named her Gala tea. Pygmalion fell in love with the beautiful statue and asked the goddess Venus to bring her to life. His wish was granted and Pygmalion and Gala tea lived happily ever after.
This theory is often manifested in a person's belief in one's self. It can also be interpreted as reverse psychology. A person who believes he can do something, will most often be able to achieve that thing because of his motivation and determination.
Take for example the fear of aging or of growing old. Persons who fear that they will become useless and unwanted by society when they reach a certain age will most probably sulk in the corner and manifest that fear when the time comes.
Because of this belief, these persons will tend to think of themselves as useless members of the society, and they even act out that belief. Thus, when they reach the golden years or beyond they stop functioning and withdraw from society. They have fulfilled their own prophesy of becoming useless members of society.
It can also hold true to a person's expectations of another person. If you treat a person this way because you believe that he or she is this kind of person, then in the long run, that person will behave and act the way you want him to be.
A person's prophesy about another person's behavior becomes self-fulfilling when he lays down the expected behavior of the other, and then behaves or acts in a manner that will most likely bring out the expected behavior. Affected by the perceiver's attitude and behavior, the other person acts in a manner that will fulfill the other person's prophesy.
Students who perceive their teacher as strict and boring will also perceive the subject as a boring subject. This perception becomes self fulfilling when the students, believing that their teacher and subject are boring, will lose interest in the lesson. Once they lose interest in their lessons, they will not appreciate the things that the teacher will impart and will thus fulfill the prophesy that the teacher and the subject are in fact boring.
Take the case of a person who lacks self esteem. This person believes that the people around him are not really interested in him or in what he says. In a group situation, this person rarely speaks and will stay in the corner and refuse to join conversations. This made the others feel that the person does not want to belong to the group so they do not include her in the conversation or in group activities. The person's prophesy that he is not well-liked has indeed come true.
So how does behave in order to keep away from making one's prophesies self fulfilling?
A person who wants to prevent his prophesies from coming true should not, in the fist place, make prophesies. Such a person should avoid judging an event or a person, or predicting how such event will turn out or such person will behave in the future.
The principle of a self-fulfilling prophesy was brought up by a Sociology professor named Robert Merton in his book "Social Theory and Social Structure". Merton concluded that prophesy becomes self-fulfilling when the following factors are present: a false perception of a situation, a behavior that is influenced by the false perception and the occurrence of fulfillment of the false perception.
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