When Prophecy Fails: A Study of Cognitive Dissonance and Belief Under Disconfirmation - Hardcover

by Leon Festinger (Author)

When Prophecy Fails is a landmark study in social psychology examining what occurs when deeply held beliefs collide with disconfirming reality.

Originally published in 1956, this influential work by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter documents the internal dynamics of a millenarian movement whose prophecy of imminent catastrophe failed to materialise. Rather than dissolve under the weight of contradiction, many adherents intensified their commitment. From this field study emerged one of the most enduring theories in modern psychology: cognitive dissonance. Observed under natural conditions, the movement provided rare empirical evidence of how belief systems adapt when confronted by failure, and how social reinforcement can strengthen conviction in the face of disproof.

Conducted under the auspices of the Laboratory for Research in Social Relations at the University of Minnesota and supported in part by the Ford Foundation, the study remains foundational to contemporary understandings of persuasion, group identity, ideological resilience, and motivated reasoning. More than a historical case study, it is a disciplined examination of the mechanisms by which individuals preserve meaning in the aftermath of prophetic collapse.

Author Biography

Leon Festinger (1919 - 1989) was an American social psychologist, perhaps best known for cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. His theories and research are credited with renouncing the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychology by demonstrating the inadequacy of stimulus-response conditioning accounts of human behavior. Festinger is also credited with advancing the use of laboratory experimentation in social psychology, although he simultaneously stressed the importance of studying real-life situations, a principle he perhaps most famously practiced when personally infiltrating a doomsday cult. He is also known in social network theory for the proximity effect (or propinquity). Festinger was the fifth most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Henry W. Riecken Jr. (1917-2012) received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1950, having studied in the Department of Social Relations, which enjoyed a well-known relationship with the Department of Psychology. A thought leader, and a follower and booster of interesting thoughts (more prescience), Riecken was the first director of the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Office of Social Sciences (later called a division) in 1959. As vice president and then president of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) from 1966 to 1971, Hank led the development of the first state-of-the-art monograph on randomized controlled trials in the United States. Riecken was a member of the first Director's Advisory Committee at the National Institutes of Health. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Medicine in 1969 (one of two social scientists) and, as a founding member, assisted in the challenging effort to create the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1971. Stanley Schachter (1922 - 1997) was an American social psychologist, who is perhaps best known for his development of the two factor theory of emotion in 1962 along with Jerome E. Singer. In his theory he states that emotions have two ingredients: physiological arousal and a cognitive label. A person's experience of an emotion stems from the mental awareness of the body's physical arousal. Schachter also studied and published a large number of works on the subjects of obesity, group dynamics, birth order and smoking. Schachter was the seventh most cited psychologist of the 20th century.