Question

Danielle is placed into a remedial mathematics class in her school even though she is sure that her skills should have qualified her for a regular math course.
Her new remedial math teacher communicates that he does not expect Danielle to perform well in class. As a result, she does not try very hard and gets very low grades in the class.

Danielle's performance in her math class most likely has been affected by a(n):
a. fundamental attribution error.
b. self-fulfilling prophecy.
c. in-group bias.
d. actor/observer bias.

Answer 1

The correct answer is B. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Explanation:

In psychology, the self-fulfilling prophecy occurs as one's behavior, ideas or results match those predicted by someone else because we have believed those predictions. This phenomenon occurs in the case of positive predictions, but also in the case of negative predictions. This applies to Daniell because due to her teacher predicting Daniell was not going to perform well in class, Danielle does not try very hard and thus, she fulfills the negative prophecy of the teacher as she has believed she was not going to perform well.