When Prophecy Fails

When Prophecy Fails

Book cover, 1964 edition.
Author Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, Stanley Schachter
Country United States
Language English
Subject Psychology
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Harper-Torchbooks
Publication date
January 1, 1956
Media type Hardcover
Pages 253
ISBN 0-06-131132-4
OCLC 217969

When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World is a classic work of social psychology by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter which studied a small UFO religion in Chicago called the Seekers that believed in an imminent apocalypse and its coping mechanisms after the event did not occur. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance can account for the psychological consequences of disconfirmed expectations. One of the first published cases of dissonance was reported in this book.

Overview

Festinger and his associates read a story in their local newspaper headlined "Prophecy from planet Clarion call to city: flee that flood."

The prophecy came from Dorothy Martin (1900–1992), a Chicago housewife who experimented with automatic writing. (In order to protect her privacy, the study gave her the alias of "Marian Keech" and relocated her group to Michigan.) She had previously been involved with L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics movement, and she incorporated ideas from what later became Scientology.[1]

The group of believers, headed by Keech, had taken strong actions to indicate their degree of commitment to the belief. They had left jobs, college, and spouses, and had given away money and possessions to prepare for their departure on a flying saucer which was to rescue the group of true believers. She claimed to have received a message from a fictional planet named Clarion. These messages revealed that the world would end in a great flood before dawn on December 21, 1954.

After the failure of the prediction, she left Chicago after being threatened with arrest and involuntary commitment. She later founded the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara. Under the name Sister Thedra, she continued to practice channeling and to participate in contactee groups until her death in 1992. The Association is active to this day.

Premise of study

Festinger and his colleagues saw this as a case that would lead to the arousal of dissonance when the prophecy failed. Altering the belief would be difficult, as Keech and her group were committed at considerable expense to maintain it. Another option would be to enlist social support for their belief. As Festinger wrote, "If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must after all be correct."

In this case, if Keech could add consonant elements by converting others to the basic premise, then the magnitude of her dissonance following disconfirmation would be reduced. Festinger and his colleagues predicted that the inevitable disconfirmation would be followed by an enthusiastic effort at proselytizing to seek social support and lessen the pain of disconfirmation.

Sequence of events

Festinger and his colleagues infiltrated Keech's group and reported the following sequence of events:

Conditions

Festinger stated that five conditions must be present if someone is to become a more fervent believer after a failure or disconfirmation:

See also

References

  1. Bainbridge, William Sims; Rodney Stark (1979). "Cult Formation: Three Compatible Models". Sociological Analysis (Oxford University Press) 40 (4): 90. ISSN 0038-0210. JSTOR 3709958. OCLC 61138057.

Further reading

External links

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