In his book “How We Know What isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life,”Thomas Gilovich writes about this very phenomenon. As humans our brains work in certain ways that even attempts at thinking logically and reasonably can betray. One simple example of this is how we search for “hypothesis-confirming evidence” as a result of our own confirmation bias, or illusory correlation. This describes when we see patterns in datasets, or in real life, when no such real patterns exist. For instance, you might think that the phone always rings while you are in the shower. It might even seem to you that this is true. However, this is more than likely to be the result of the fact that your brain is only noticing the positive-positiveevents. You only notice the times when you are in the shower (positive) and the phone rings (positive). However, you ignore the fact that there are many non-events where you are either in the shower and the phone does not ring or when the phone rings but you are not in the shower. The exclusion of this other data biases our brains into believing something that is not true. There have been scientific studies conducted to show that we often do behave like this, most notably the work in the 1960s from psychologist Peter Watson who coined the term “confirmation bias”.
This example is not exactly what happens when we attempt to interpret prophecy, but is a perfect example of the kind of psychological heuristics that come into play all the time when it involves how we think about things. A simple illustration of how this applies to prophecy is the old adage “bad things always happen in threes.” This is a good example in and of itself, but consider how this adage is applied quite commonly to celebrity deaths. Because many people believe this to be “true” (or at the very least less-than-coincidental), we selectively choose our evidence to prove to ourselves that it is true. First, one celebrity passes away. After this happens, believers in the saying will search out two subsequent celebrity deaths, no matter how important the celebrity or how closely timed their deaths were, and offer that up as a validation of the saying. However, in doing so, they ignore the circumstantial and coincidental nature of the evidence they have selected. Any two other people that could have possibly died could have fit their expectations. This is what Thomas Gilovich means when he uses the term “hypothesis-confirming evidence.” Out of all the evidence that could have been gathered (and should have been gathered if we were to test a hypothesis scientifically), we see here an example of specifically selecting only the evidence that confirms the hypothesis, convincing ourselves that this evidence is enough. We selectively sample the real world, conform, and interpret those samples into meaning what we already expected them to mean in the first place.
Let us apply this same phenomenon to the specific prophecy of the Chosen One. I have already mentioned that there was evidence to support the theory that Anakin was in fact the Chosen One. Yet, I pose the question of how much this evidence was truly enough to confirm the hypothesis versus Qui-Gon, and later Obi-Wan, selectively interpreting the evidence to mean what they wanted it to mean. This is a valid question to ask no matter if they were correct in their hypotheses and assumptions as George Lucas has already confirmed (See the ROTS DVD Commentary). If this is the case, you can see why the feeling of betrayal that Obi-Wan felt at the end of ROTS was so strong and profound. Not only had his best friend, his own brother by his account, betrayed him, but he was also feeling a great sense of loss in that something he had held to be true all along might not have been true at all. Perhaps he was even wondering to himself if he had reached that conclusion based on faulty or biased evidence. (Ok, he was probably more moved by the fact that his best friend was limbless and on fire, but still. 
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However, I want to avoid being overly critical of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon here because I submit that such is the very nature of prophecy. I believe that prophecy itself predisposes people to search for evidence that would seek to confirm the prophecy regardless of the validity of the prophecy or of the interpretation. I experience this on a very frequent basis when it comes to Biblical prophecy. I attend a very evangelical church as a member of a very evangelical denomination of Christianity. Many people I know have a specific emphasis on end-times prophecy and actively try to see how current events fit into these prophecies. Every time anything happens in the world involving Israel, Iraq (who they read as Babylon), Iran (who they read as Persia), or any other contemporary nation or people group with even the slightest possibility of having a Biblical counterpart, they seek to interpret these events as the fulfillment of divine prophecies from many millennia ago. And while it may be the case that their specific interpretations are correct (again, my thesis does not necessarily deal with whether or not these hypotheses are correct but rather if we have enough evidence to conclude they are definitively), I submit that the very nature of prophecy is urging them to incorrectly, illogically, and unscientifically seek out hypothesis-confirming evidence in favor of their conclusion. The exact same thing is often true of all kind of prophetic adages, horoscopes, etc that are based on generalizations or vagueness.
As I conclude, let me say that I have generally positive feelings about human nature, and I am not trying to assert that most people who engage in this sort of prophetic interpretation and prediction are willfully and deliberately trying to deceive others for illegitimate or harmful reasons. However, I do feel like we should give a little closer examination to the things we believe and why we believe them, as the Jedi should have. While the prophecies may be true and the Force might be eventually brought back into balance as a result, let us not abandon our role, and our duty, to be informed, logical skeptics of the world around us.
