Behavioral confirmation is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people's social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations. The phenomenon of belief creating reality is known by several names in literature: self-fulfilling prophecy, expectancy confirmation, and behavioral confirmation, which was first coined by social psychologist Mark Snyder in 1984. Snyder preferred this term because it emphasizes that is it the target's actual behavior that confirms the perceiver's beliefs.