WHEN PROPHECY FAILS AND WHEN IT SUCCEEDS: APOCALYPTIC PREDICTION AND THE RE-ENTRY INTO ORDINARY TIME

Stephen D. O'Leary

Cognitive Dissonance and Scholarly Models if Apocalyptic Movements

Since the 1956 publication of the classic VVhen Prophecy Fails: A Social and P.rychological Study if a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction if the World, Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance has become a standard part of the description of the dynamics of apocalyptic sects and movements, regularly employed by scholars to explain why religious groups may prosper despite what would seem to be a direct refutation of deeply held beliefs.l Festinger and his colleagues argue that under certain circumstances (when predictions are specific enough, when believers have sufficiently committed themselves, and when the proper forms of social support are present), the disconfirmation of a deeply held belief may result in increased proselytizing and a strength• ening, rather than abandonment, of the belief system. In such a sit• uation, there is a way to reduce "cognitive dissonance"-the mental discomfort that ensues when one is confronted with evidence that a deeply held belief appears to be false-created by predictive failure. We focus on this study for two reasons: First, VVhen Prophecy Fails is a widely known and influential work, which may provide some

1 Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, W'hen Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study qf a Modem Group that Predicted the Destmction qf the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1964 [1956]). For examples of studies employing (and sometimes criticizing) the cognitive dissonance model, see: Jane Allyn Hardyck and Marcia Braden, "Prophecy Fails Again: A Report of a Failure to Replicate," Journal qf Abnormal and Social Psychology 65 (1962), pp. 136-141; Robert W. Balch, Gwen Famsworth, and Sue Wilkins, "When the Bombs Drop: Reactions to Disconfirmed Prophecy in a Millennial Sect," Sociological Perspectives 26 (1983), pp. 137-158; J. Gordon Melton, "Spiritualization and Reaffirmation: What Really Happens When Prophecy Fails," American Studies 26 (Fall 1985), pp. 17-29; J.F. Zygmunt, "Prophetic Failure and Chiliastic Identity: The Case of Jehovah's Witnesses," American Journal qf Sociology 75 (1970), pp. 926-948. 342 STEPHEN D. O'LEARY familiar common ground for scholars who employ disciplinary ap• proaches very different from our own. Second, those readers not familiar with the study, or without a background in the social sci• ences, can still gain a useful perspective on millennial and apoca• lyptic movements by examining Festinger's theory and assessing its limitations. Although Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance does provide a helpful way to explain certain dynamics of apocalyptic sects and movements, there are important aspects of these move• ments that have either been obscured or ignored by researchers, beginning with Festinger himself. These aspects may be illuminated by questioning the title: "When Prophecy Fails" (italics added). My question is, fails at what? or on whose terms? Festinger and his colleagues, talented social scientists, were accus• tomed to understanding prediction in scientific terms. In the tradi• tional paradigm of scientific rationality, predictions function as tests of theory, and hence are subject to rigorous standards of proof; when they are falsified, the "rational" cognitive response is to abandon the theory. When people irrationally cling to theories after they have been falsified, it is perfectly natural to view this response as illogi• cal, and explain it in terms of "dissonance reduction." The modern• ist conception of scientific rationality as objective was dominant in the 1950s when Festinger and his colleagues were performing their study. However, recent scholarship has called this judgment into question. Robert F. Goodman notes that "scientific research is a social process in which competing values and interests have a cru• cial role to play."2 With this insight in mind, the particular value that modernist science ascribes to the act of prediction-as a test of theory within an epistemology that valorizes falsifiability as the ulti• mate test of knowledge-needs a closer examination. We argue that Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter's study is grounded in implicit

2 Robert F. Goodman, Rethinking Knowledge: R4lections Across the Disciplines, ed. Robert F. Goodman and Walter R. Fisher (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. xix. This volume is only one of a flood of recent publications that further the landmark work of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure qf Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). Another work that goes beyond naive modernist views of scientific rationalism is David L. Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account qf the Social and Conceptual Development qf Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). For a valuable collection of essays that investigates the rhetoric of the sciences across a variety of disciplines, see John S. Nelson, Alan Megill, and Donald N. McC1oskey, eds., The Rhetoric qf the Human Sciences (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).