Self-efficacy as a moderator of negative and positive self-fulfilling prophecy effects: mothers' beliefs and children's alcohol use

This research examined two issues relevant to self-fulfilling prophecies. First, it examined whether children’s risk for alcohol use, as indicated by their self-efficacy to refuse alcohol from peers, moderated their susceptibility to negative and positive self-fulfilling prophecy effects created by their mothers. Second, it explored behavioral mediators that could be involved in the self-fulfilling process between mothers and children. Longitudinal data from 540 mother–child dyads indicated that (1) low self-efficacy children were more susceptible to their mothers’ positive than negative self-fulfilling effects, whereas high self-efficacy children’s susceptibility did not vary, (2) mothers’ global parenting and children’s perception of their friends’ alcohol use partially mediated mothers’ self-fulfilling effects, and (3) these mediators contributed to low self-efficacy children’s greater susceptibility to positive self-fulfilling prophecy effects. The power of self-fulfilling prophecies, their link to social problems, and the potential for mothers’ favorable beliefs to have a protective influence on adolescent alcohol use are discussed. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. A prevailing theme in the psychological literature is that perceivers’ false beliefs can shape the future behavior of targets – a process referred to as a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948). Although the self-fulfilling prophecy has historically been characterized as powerful (Jussim, 1991), naturalistic research has not supported this claim. The power of naturally occurring self-fulfilling prophecy effects is typically small in magnitude (Jussim, 1991; Jussim&Eccles, 1995; Jussim, Eccles, &Madon, 1996). However, these small effects represent averages that do not take into consideration the possibility that self-fulfilling prophecies may be more powerful under some conditions or among particular targets. European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 499–520 (2008) Published online 1 May 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.429 *Correspondence to: Dr Jennifer Willard or Stephanie Madon, W112 Lagomarcino Hall, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA. E-mails: [email protected]; [email protected] Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 25 May 2006 Accepted 26 February 2007 Accordingly, much of the recent work addressing self-fulfilling prophecies has focused on potential moderators of the process (see Jussim et al., 1996; Jussim & Harber, 2005, for reviews). The current research contributes to this effort by investigating whether targets’ self-views interact with the favorableness of perceivers’ inaccurate beliefs to influence the power of naturally occurring self-fulfilling prophecy effects. The term self-fulfilling prophecy was first introduced to the social sciences by Merton (1948). A sociologist by training, Merton proposed that self-fulfilling prophecies had the potential to create large scale social problems such as bank runs and discrimination against ethnic minorities. Although Merton’s analysis was purely theoretical, it resulted in literally hundreds of experimental investigations of the self-fulfilling prophecy process (see Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978; Snyder, 1984, 1992; Snyder & Stukas, 1999, for reviews). This large body of experimental work is critically important because it provides strong evidence that the self-fulfilling prophecy is a real phenomenon that can occur when perceivers hold false beliefs about targets. However, the experimental approach cannot address the extent to which self-fulfilling prophecies characterize interpersonal relationships in the real world (Jussim, 1989). In the typical experiment, researchers artificially induce false beliefs in perceivers by providing them with invalid information about targets. In most cases, this invalid information constitutes the only information that perceivers have about targets; a situation that contrasts with the naturalistic environment in which perceivers typically have at least some valid information about targets on which to base their beliefs (Madon, Smith et al., 2001). Because only inaccurate beliefs can be self-fulfilling, the availability of valid information reduces the potential for perceivers to influence targets’ behavior by means of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In addition, ethical considerations preclude experiments from testing whether self-fulfilling prophecies can have negative influences on important outcomes. For example, it would be unethical to falsely lead parents to believe that their child is at risk for alcohol use in order to examine whether that belief increases their child’s actual use of alcohol during adolescence. Concerns regarding the external validity of experimental findings and the potential for self-fulfilling prophecies to have negative influences on important target outcomes have prompted researchers to examine self-fulfilling prophecies in naturalistic contexts using correlational data (for reviews, see Jussim & Eccles, 1995; Jussim et al., 1996; Jussim & Harber, 2005). Consistent with the self-fulfilling prophecy process, this literature indicates that perceivers’ beliefs about targets predict targets’ subsequent outcomes beyond the effect of predictive accuracy, as captured by the inclusion of relevant control variables. For example, the beliefs that teachers naturally develop about their students’ academic potential predict their students’ year-end achievement after accounting for predictors of student achievement, such as students’ previous achievement, effort, and motivation (Jussim, 1989; Jussim & Eccles, 1992). Likewise, the beliefs that parents naturally develop about their children’s alcohol use predict their children’s alcohol use 1–5 years later after accounting for predictors of adolescent alcohol use, such as children’s past alcohol use, their own expectations for future alcohol use, and their access to alcohol (Madon, Guyll, Spoth, Cross, & Hilbert, 2003; Madon, Guyll, Spoth, & Willard, 2004; Madon, Willard, Guyll, Trudeau, & Spoth, 2006). However, the magnitude of naturally occurring self-fulfilling prophecy effects is typically small, rarely exceeding 0.1–0.2 in terms of standardized regression coefficients (Jussim, 1991). THE MODERATING EFFECT OF A BELIEF’S VALENCE ON NATURALLY OCCURRING SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES Even though it is now well-established that naturally occurring self-fulfilling prophecy effects are modest in terms of their magnitude, there are conditions under which, and targets for whom, such Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 499–520 (2008) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp 500 Jennifer Willard et al.