Cognitive Dissonance: Difference between revisions

In the summer of 1954, Festinger was reading the morning newspaper when he encountered a short article about Dorothy Martin, a housewife in Chicago who was convinced that the apocalypse was coming. Martin had experimented with automatic handwriting and started getting messages from an extra-terrestrial from the planet Clarion.  , a few years before, but now the messages were getting eerily specific. According to the alien, human civilization would be destroyed by a massive flood before dawn on December 21, 1954.

Keech’s prophecy soon gained a small band of followers.  They trusted her messages, 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, who called themselves ''the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays''.

Festinger realized that the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays would make a great research subject and infiltrated the group by pretending to be a true believer. Festinger wanted to study the reaction of the cultists on December 21, when the prophecy failed.

On the night of December 20, Keech’s followers gathered in her home and waited for the aliens to appear. Midnight inexorably approached. When the clock read 12:01 and there were still no aliens, the cultists began to worry. A few began to cry. The aliens had let them down. But then Keech received a new telegram from outer space, which she quickly transcribed on her notepad. “''This little group sitting all night long had spread so much light'',” the aliens told her, “''that god saved the world from destruction. Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and light as now floods this room.''” It was their stubborn faith that had prevented the apocalypse.