Cassandra paradox

In social science, the Cassandra paradox describes how a social scientist's prediction of human behaviour might influence future human behavior. It can be summarized by the phrase: "Being seen by the seen distorts what is seen". The basis of this paradox is that by predicting the future, one is causing the predicted event to occur.
Origin of the term
The paradox takes its name from Cassandra, a Trojan princess in Greek mythology. The god Apollo fell in love with her, and granted her the ability to accurately predict the future. However, Cassandra was unfaithful to him, and Apollo, in anger, placed a curse upon her so that no-one would believe her predictions.
Examples
*A person who expects people to be friendly may smile more, and thus receive more smiles.
*A person expecting to be lucky may enter many more competitions, and thus increase their chances of winning.
*When told that a bank is in trouble, people may rush to take out their money, thereby causing the bank to fail.
*Expectations of rises and falls in market trends can cause those trends to rise or fall.
The Cassandra paradox can also be seen in experiments when researchers tell the participants what behaviours are expected of them, thus causing the participants to behave in that way.

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