Social Influence by Requesting Self‐Prophecy

Asking people to predict whether they will perform a target action often increases the probability of their performing that action. This article reviews published and unpublished research evidence for this “self‐prophecy” phenomenon and reports 2 new experiments. The studies reviewed demonstrate that the self‐prophecy effect occurs in a variety of situations and that it is a moderate‐size effect. The new experiments introduce a 1‐session procedure that is considerably more efficient in testing theory than the 2‐session procedure of previous experiments. In the prior studies, as in the present self‐prophecy studies, participants appear to reduce a discrepancy between their principles and their behavior, made salient by prediction, through changing the behavior. Toward the ends of encouraging future investigation and developing theoretical understanding of the effect, the article concludes with discussion of related programs of research that may provide theoretical explanations for the effect.