Published:
10 May 2021 Leaders and employees self-fulfilling prophecies could be a determining factor in how a business coped during lockdown and how they will go forward during potential continued uncertainty and instability. This is because our beliefs influence our behaviour and actions.
A self-fulfilling prophecy was first coined by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1948 and is best described as belief or expectation (which we might not be consciously aware of) that is capable of influencing whether it happens or not through our subsequent actions. A self-fulfilling prophecy can be positive and negative. If you think for example that you won’t be able to achieve an objective, you may well inadvertently sabotage it. If you are highly motivated and confident in your abilities, you are far more likely to ensure you fulfil your goal.
In 1939, a first-year doctoral student at UC Berkeley named George Dantzig, arrived late to class. His professor, famous statistician Jerzy Neyman, had written two statistics problems on the blackboard. Dantzig quickly jotted them down, assuming that they were homework problems. A few days later, Dantzig turned in the problems late to Professor Neyman, apologizing for the overdue assignment. The problems had seemed “a little harder to do than usual.” Six weeks later, an ecstatic Professor Neyman knocked on Dantzig’s door. As it turns out, the problems weren’t homework at all. They just so happened to be two famous unsolved problems in statistics. And Dantzig had solved both of them.
Pioneering scholar talks Stigler’s Law, French lotteries and statistical history
At any given university, statisticians aren’t usually at the top of the list of library visitors. But when Prof. Emeritus Stephen Stigler was a visiting associate professor of statistics at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s, he found himself drawn to the libraries and their archives of math publications.
He was surprised to find, in an issue of the
American Journal of Mathematics from the 1920s, some principles related to his doctoral thesis that had been stated four decades before but apparently lost in the literature. Then he found another example an article written in 1816-1818 by French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace that included a mathematical result that was unknown at the time of Stigler s reading.
Is
hygge still a thing? The Danish concept of comfortable conviviality and all things cozy is supposed to capture the essence of Danish culture and has been marketed as the secret for happy living. A few years back, there was a surge of hygge-related books, articles, and household products. Journalists from around the world were touring Denmark to document various aspects of this unique lifestyle. The enthusiasm around Denmark was stimulated by the nation’s reputation of being the happiest country in the world. However, last time I checked, the designer store across the street here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, had moved its selection of Hygge branded candles to the clearance corner.