Close Banner Personal Growth Self-Fulfilling Prophecies & How To Overcome Negative Ones, From Experts Author: Sarah Regan March 08, 2026 mbg Spirituality & Relationships Editor By Sarah Regan mbg Spirituality & Relationships Editor Sarah Regan is a Spirituality & Relationships Editor, and a registered yoga instructor. She received her bachelor's in broadcasting and mass communication from SUNY Oswego, and lives in Buffalo, New York. What is a self-fulfilling prophecy? The psychology behind them The Pygmalion effect In relationships In the workplace Self-fulfilling prophecies & mental health How to overcome negative self-fulfilling prophecies Image by Aaron Thomas / Stocksy March 08, 2026 We carefully vet all products and services featured on mindbodygreen using our commerce guidelines. Our selections are never influenced by the commissions earned from our links. If you're all about using the law of attraction for manifesting, you probably already have a baseline understanding of self-fulfilling prophecies. This psychological principle states that our thoughts can govern our reality to some degree—for better or worse. Here, experts weigh in on what self-fulfilling prophecies are, when they happen, and how to overcome negative ones. What a self-fulfilling prophecy really means. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when an expectation or belief results in that expectation being met. As neuroscientist and author of  The Source   Tara Swart, M.D., Ph.D., explains to mbg, it's a strong and/or repetitive thought, based on a conscious or more likely subconscious belief, that drives a certain view of the world and how it works. That perspective, she says, then "drives certain behaviors that make the outcome become more likely." For example, if you convince yourself you're going to have an awful time at a party, you will behave as such, and might end up having an awful time indeed. The psychology behind self-fulfilling prophecies. The term "self-fulfilling prophecy" was coined by American sociologist Robert Merton, Ph.D. in 1948. He described it as "a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior, which makes the originally false conception come true." According to psychiatrist Anna Yusim, M.D., when we have certain things we believe or fear, we manifest them through putting our attention on them—and often in negative or undesirable ways." Even if you insist you don't want something, "in the unconscious mind, 'no' and 'don't' aren't really recognized and so the unconscious mind recognizes 'I really want this to happen.' The 'don't' is excluded," she explains. But of course, self-fulfilling prophecies can sometimes be positive, as demonstrated by the Pygmalion effect. The Pygmalion effect. The Pygmalion effect is all about higher expectations leading to improved outcomes. It gets its name from the mythical Greek character Pygmalion, who fell in love with a statue he had carved himself. Science is starting to uncover how this effect works in the body: In one 1960s study, researchers Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson 1 found that when teachers expected better performance from their students, the students did, in fact, perform better. They theorized that because the teachers thought their students were smart or would perform well, this likely lead them to show more concern for the students' learning, be more attentive, or even have a more positive mood around the students (all of which could help facilitate learning). The point is, when we hold a bias or expectation about something, we will often act as such, which can bring about the outcome—whether we wanted it or not. Self-fulfilling prophecies in relationships. Our biases can influence every area of our lives, and relationships are no exception. As Swart notes, some common relationship "prophecies" are I'll never meet someone to marry , or I'll never have a family . But "the more we ruminate on these thoughts, the more we embed brain pathways that hold these as true," she says. The self-fulfilling prophecy comes in when we believe "I'll never find anyone" so much that we stop putting ourselves out there, which makes the initial thoughts more likely to be true, for example. Similarly, Yusim adds, if you have a fear of abandonment or a fear of being alone, you can wind up unintentionally manifesting it. If you feel like your friends always abandon you, as another example, you may push them away or take on negative behaviors because you think they're just going to abandon you anyway. Self-fulfilling prophecies in the workplace. If you tell yourself you're stuck in a job for life, as Swart offers as an example, you may act as such (by not applying to jobs or pushing for a promotion, etc.). Or, if you feel you're terrible at your job, you may subconsciously start to underperform. Yusim notes that these self-fulfilling prophecies often come from our fears, and "by virtue of that fear, you can create or can act in such a way th