A Long-Term Set is a source for expectancies.
Long-term sets. This is perhaps one of the most powerful factors in expectancy development. Ironically, it is also probably the one we are least aware of.
Long-term sets are a function of culture. It is such a part of our lives that it seems like reality and not anything we have learned.
Here is a powerful example. There is a true story, and a movie, about the story about Papillon, a man who was sentenced to Devil’s Island.
This was a particularly desolate prison (see poem about it in the notes and a picture of how it looks now).
To be put into solitary confinement for six months was equivalent to a death sentence because they did not receive enough protein to survive.
Papillon, of course, was sentenced to solitary confinement. Had I been there with him the outcome of our terms would have been vastly different.
NOTES: See Devil's Island as it is today.
NOTES: Here is an interesting poem about Devil's Island