A Summary Of Inaccurate Expectations

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During the early 1930’s economic instability created public fear of financial collapse. After a number of unstable banks went out of business, fearful customers of other banks rushed to withdraw their savings. Since most banks do not hold large amounts of cash in reserve and instead invest the money through loans such as home mortgages or bonds, they did not have enough cash on hand to meet the withdrawal demand. Consequently, many otherwise solvent banks went bankrupt in a matter of days, even hours. Their customers had created the very calamity they feared would happen. Merton (2016) cites this as one example of how inaccurate expectations (in this case, a self-fulfilling prophecy) created devastating consequences. Expectations can aid or hinder one’s ability to navigate circumstances and relationships. Expectations are assumptions that people hold about how things work—about how relationships function and how life operates. People expect things to …show more content…

Circumstances and relationships are complex, generating vast amounts of information at once. If one needed to learn about each new situation from scratch, life would be too overwhelming to manage effectively. Not unlike drinking out of a firehose, there is too much to take in. As one learns how life operates, those lessons carry forward into new situations. This way one does not have to enter into every new situation as if he or she is starting from the beginning. Kenrick, Neuberg, and Cialdini (2015) define expectations as “our beliefs about [how] the world function[s]…they tell us what we may expect from the people and situations around us” (p. 75). In any social interaction, for example, certain behavioral and cultural norms not only guide one’s own behavior but also one’s interpretation of others behavior. These norms, or expectations, guide individuals as they engage with the people and circumstances around

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