title: Self-fulfilling prophecies: the synergistic accumulative effect of parents' beliefs on children's drinking behavior.
abstract: This research examined whether mothers' and fathers' beliefs about their children's alcohol use had cumulative self-fulfilling effects on their children's future drinking behavior. Analyses of longitudinal data acquired from 115 seventh-grade children and their mothers and fathers were consistent with synergistic accumulation effects for negative beliefs: Parents' beliefs predicted the greatest degree of confirmatory behavior from children when both mothers and fathers overestimated their children's alcohol use. Results did not support synergistic accumulation effects for positive beliefs: Children's predicted future alcohol use was similar regardless of whether one parent or both underestimated their child's alcohol use. These findings suggest that the generally small self-fulfilling effects reported in the literature may underestimate the power of negative self-fulfilling prophecies to harm targets because studies have not taken into consideration the possibility that negative self-fulfilling prophecies may be more likely than positive ones to accumulate across multiple perceivers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA. madon@iastate.edu
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Madon
authors.forename: Max
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guyll
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Spoth
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Willard
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D001290:Attitude; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007484:Iowa; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012307:Risk Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires