When Prophecy Fails
Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, Stanley Schachter
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1905177194
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In 1954 Leon Festinger, a brilliant young experimental social psychologist in the process of outlining a new theory of human behavior - the theory of cognitive dissonance - and his colleagues infiltrated a cult who believed the end of the world was only months away. How would these people feel when their prophecy remained unfulfilled? Would they admit the error of their prediction, or would they readjust their reality to make sense of the new circumstances?
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Time was passing and we were losing opportunities for valuable observation. We therefore decided upon a stratagem suggested to us by Dr. Armstrong’s inquiry to our observer as to whether he had ever had any “psychic experiences.” We decided to equip our representative with an “experience” with the supernatural. The observer had told Dr. Armstrong of his having spent some time in Mexico, so we borrowed a folktale and set the scene there. The story our observer told was as follows: He and a
members’ duty to inform the inquirer about the disaster and answer all his questions, since not everyone who had been chosen had been “beamed in” yet. Like Sananda and the Creator, Dr. Browning was preaching cautious and selective proselyting. In general, the Armstrongs seem to have been reassured by what they heard from Dr. Browning. Despite the fact that they had already disbanded the Seekers, on Wednesday, December 8, the Armstrongs planned another meeting of the group for the following day.
silence. The group could not abandon the matter completely, however, and soon various members were suggesting explanations for the failure of the saucers to appear that afternoon. One suggestion was that the presence of strangers, nonmembers of the group, in the house had caused the spacemen to veer off. This possibility was discussed with interest for a time but was clearly unsatisfying. A few other suggestions were advanced, but the one the group agreed upon in the end was that the afternoon
later she seemed relieved. The long telephone call had been from a glib local newscaster. On the morning of the 20th, he had phoned to invite Marian to an end-of-the-world cocktail party to begin at midnight and last until the end of the world. During this earlier call, the commentator had apparently been impertinent and irreverent and when Marian refused to join his party, he accused Sananda of being narrow-minded. Marian had terminated that call in heat and anger. In his call on the morning
for and had altered their lives considerably because of this belief. Burkitt, for example, states that Peter, at one point, “exclaimed that he and his companions really had left all to follow Jesus.”39 Thus, we may assert that the first two conditions which we stated early in the chapter are fulfilled. There is no denying that the apostles provided support for one another and that they went out to proselyte following the crucifixion of Jesus. Thus, we may accept as fact that the fifth condition
