I am
a volleyball coach for high school and club teams. As such, I have always prided myself on being able to pick out a good player. Even before I have seen them in action, I have said to myself, “that girl can play.” After reading up on the subject of education in our textbook, I realize that this might not be because I am a smart volleyball super-genius. Unfortunately, I think I may be guilty of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is when one’s expectations of another influence the perceptions and behaviors toward them. These perceptions and behaviors then, in turn, cause the other person to act in a way that confirms these expectations (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012, pg 204).
Lets take an example to better show you what I mean. Two girls walk into the gym, player A and player B. I tell myself player A is going to be good. I also tell myself, player B is never going to amount to anything. As a result, I spend a lot of time working with player A. Giving her good feedback, push her to constantly give 100% effort, and I spend extra time explaining things to her. Also, because of my thoughts on player B’s lack of skill, I spend very little time with her, I don’t push her as hard, and I don’t give her as much feedback. Over the course of a season, player A gets much better, much faster than player B. I then tell myself, “What a great eye for talent you have coach.”
When in reality, my expectations about each player (player A will be much better than player B) have influenced my behavior toward them (I spend more quality time with player A). This behavior then causes player A to get much better than player B, or in other words, they confirm my expectations. When my expectations are confirmed, I tell myself what a great coach I am. When you put it in these terms, I think there could be the self-fulfilling prophecy in action.
Since this is applied social psychology, my attention naturally turns to implementing an intervention. Step 1 has already been explained; the problem is I may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So what are the precipitating and perpetuating factors? A precipitating factor has to be my inner dialogue. Telling myself who can play before I see them play. The perpetuating factor would then be spending more high quality time with players I have told myself will be good.
With these factors identified, I can now begin to design the program activities. First, I must reserve judgment. Next, I must try to keep track of the amount of tim
e spent with each player and ensure that the time is roughly equivalent and of equal quality. Third, I must hold every player to the same standard of effort. So in order to implement this intervention, I will need a sheet of paper with the player’s names and the ability to mark when I gave them feedback. Next I will need rules that are equally enforced amongst all players. For example, hustle after every ball, call every ball, and cheer for your teammates.
To evaluate myself, I would go through the sheet and make sure I had roughly the same amount of feedback for each player. I would also have to videotape practice and make sure every girl was punished, every time she broke one of the rules. I would also quantify the quality of the feedback with this tape. For example, “good job” would be considered bad feedback because of lack of specificity, whereas “excellent footwork on your approach” would be considered good feedback.
Basically I need to make sure that the differences in their improvement over a season is due to their ability and hard work, not to my selective coaching. I feel like I owe it to the girls to give each one of them a fair chance to get better. Hopefully this intervention will better allow that to happen.
References
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Tags: Applied social psychology, education, self fulfilling prophecy, sports, volleyball
Firstly great title choice, its what led me to read your blog post since I was wondering how it would be relevant to the education topic. I also enjoyed your individualized intervention. I think that supplying feedback to all the players may have several positive effects for the team such as proper goal pursuit and constructive criticism. A simple yet possible method for reducing the self-fulfilling prophecy would be to rely on hard facts. Refrain from judgement about the players and make opinions bases off things such as attendance, cooperation, game statistics and leadership skills. Also utilize a second opinion for example an assistant coach before making opinions.
Good luck with the intervention as well as Volleyball season!