Expectancies and Ethnicity: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in College Basketball

Abstract

The self-fulfilling prophecy refers to the potential influence of communicated expectations on behavior (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). The influence of expectations on performance is explained in both the education and sport literature via a four-step process (Good & Brophy, 1978; Horn & Lox, 1993). First, coaches form expectations about their athletes through various impression cues such as ethnicity, gender, and somatotype. Second, these expectations affect a coach's behavior, including the quality and quantity of feedback issued. Third, the coach's behavior in turn influences the athletes' psychological development and performance. Fourth, the completion of the self-fulfilling prophecy cycle occurs when the athlete's behavior reinforces the coach's original expectation. If the coach's expectancy messages are conveyed consistently over time, and the athlete accurately perceives these messages, her or his behavior is likely to conform to the expectation (Martinek, Crowe, & Rejeski, 1982). Therefore in this expectancy cycle, coaches' expectations and concomitant behaviors become predictive of athletes' perceptions and future behavior. Although results are equivocal regarding the effect of communicated expectations in nonelite sport environments (Horn, 1984; Rejeski, Darracott, & Hutslar, 1979), three recent studies determined that in elite sport contexts, high-expectancy athletes received more overall, specific, and evaluative feedback (Sinclair & Vealey, 1989) and more technical instruction (Krane, Eklund, & McDermott, 1991; Solomon et al., in press) than their low-expectancy counterparts. This evidence indicates that the self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon exists in elite sport settings. Expectancy theory maintains that coaches' expectations develop from various impression cues, such as race and ethnicity, and are emitted to the athlete via verbal and nonverbal behaviors (Martinek et a]., 1982). Previous research in the educational setting illustrated that teachers' communicated expectations are