Question

Guided by the cognitive perspective of intergroup conflict, explain how expectations can affect construal processes, how self-fulfilling prophecies can affect construal processes, and give a real-world example of each. Finally, explain how expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies are related to one another.

Answer 1

Hello, Thank you for your question. :)

To answer your question, the cognitive perspective in psychology is concerned with how an individual uses his cognitive process to construct his environment. It aims to understand how an individual looks at his world from his perspective, thoughts, experiences, etc.

Expectations about the world are developed based on past experiences and our memories. For example, if you worked in a company for more than 5 years your past knowledge from working there will help you create an expectation that you will get a promotion soon. In this way, you construct your world and your idea of your job based on your past experiences and create expectations for your future.

When you talk about conflicts suppose for eg a relationship conflict. When you enter into a relationship you develop a construct or expectations about what relationships are, based on your observation of people in relationships, your parent's relationship or your past experiences with being in a relationship. Similarly, your partner too has also developed their own constructs. Many times these expectations, if they are very dominant, can interfere with your relationship and cause conflict because your partner cannot fulfill these expectations

Similarly, this can be applied to intergroup conflicts. When members in a particular group do not fit your expectation it can lead to intergroup conflicts within the group. For eg you belong to an NGO which feeds the homeless. When you joined the group you had this expectation that the member would be humble, very generous and always trying to help the homeless in whatever way they can but after a point of time, you realize that some members are not as what you expected and you find them complaining about the work they do. This creates conflicts within the group because they don't fulfill your expectations.

When expectations are fulfilled through ACTIONS it is called Self fulfilling prophecy

Self-fulfilling prophecy refers to the phenomenon of predicting something or expecting something to come true and therefore will perform certain behaviors to fulfill this expectation. For eg if you are the boss of a company and you have this belief that in the next 2 years your company will become successful, unconsciously your behaviors will be more positive, driving forward and highly motivated. Seeing your behavior your employees may also work as hard. In this way, your expectations about your future have resulted in behaviors that help fulfill that expectation about your future. Therefore you fulfill your predictions. Similarly, if you join a new company and believe that your colleague will not like you, unconsciously you may act in a reserved, unfriendly or defensive manner which will prevent anyone from being friendly with you and it will fulfill your expectations that your colleagues will not like you.

How are they related? well, they both are based on our past experiences and knowledge that we have and they both try to predict something for the future. When we or others through actions or behaviors fulfill our expectations it comes under self-fulfilling prophecy. Thus in this way, our cognition affects our behavior and can influence intergroup conflicts.

Hope this answers your doubts! :)