Can people eventually become the stereotype they were originally falsely assumed to be?

Anonymous

Just wonder about the psychology on this. I remember reading a detailed case study about a social experiment done with teachers and grade school students.

A group of teachers was told that one of their classroom students was academically gifted. But the students were really just randomly chosen. As it turns out the randomly chosen students actually did perform better on test scores despite them most likely just being average to begin with. They were treated differently and the expectations made them perform better.

But I wonder how this plays into negative stereotypes as well. If people are assumed to be dishonest, violent, sexually deviant, etc. do they eventually become the negative stereotype despite not really being like that to begin with?

I know people will likely bring up race here. Yes that is widely discussed. But I am really going for positive and negative gender stereotypes. Truth is I think the often unfair “creep” label many men get nowadays can make eventually drive some men in a very bad direction. Not to say some guys don’t deserve that label. Some have definitely earned it. But it seems like that negative stereotype gets thrown out more on assumptions about somebody vs. actual facts.

Can people eventually become the stereotype they were originally falsely assumed to be?
3 Opinion