NR1204_05 2/18/09 12:49 PM Page 72 Prophecy and Dissonance A Reassessment of Research Testing the Festinger Theory Jon R. Stone ABSTRACT: In the fifty years since publication of Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails (1956), scholars have reduced the reliability of this study to one statement, namely, that Festinger holds true if, and only if, failed prophecy results in believers actively proselytizing others. This essay takes a different tack. Rather than offer yet another modification to the Festinger thesis, it is the purpose of this essay to suggest additional lines of inquiry that have heretofore been overlooked. After an assessment of a small but representative sample of the research that Festinger has inspired, this essay will outline three alternative research trajectories that interested scholars might fruitfully follow, each related to the original focus of Festinger on prophecy and dissonance. First, dissonance seeking consonance might account for why people join prophetic movements. Second, the resolution of cognitive dissonance might be the occasion for a prophetic utterance rather than the result of a failed prophecy. Third, the existence of multiple prophets within a movement and the rivalries that result appear to heighten dissonance, sometimes undermining the confidence of committed followers. o you recall the anxiety that accompanied the approach of the year 2000? Millions upon millions of worried souls collectively Dholding their breath? Experts had predicted widespread disasters caused by the Y2K computer programming glitch in which cyber clocks would revert to the year 1900 and the industrialized world would be thrown back to the age of the horse and buggy. Frantically, people Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 12, Issue 4, pages 72–90, ISSN 1092-6690 (print), 1541-8480 (electronic). © 2009 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/nr.2009.12.4.72 72 NR1204_05 2/18/09 12:49 PM Page 73 Stone: Prophecy and Dissonance prepared for the worst, buying survival kits, handguns, beef jerky, and cases upon cases of Twinkies and toilet paper. On New Year’s Eve 1999, I remember watching the fireworks over the Golden Gate Bridge among a group of trepidatious revelers from a safe perch atop “Holy Hill” in Berkeley. When the fireworks had ended, I walked home, half-humor- ously wondering whether there would still be a home—the other half wondering what I was going to do with a case of Twinkies. But after the ball had dropped in Times Square, and inebriated strangers exchanged kisses and sang a heartfelt, if off-key, “Auld Lang Syne,” the earth con- tinued to rotate upon its axis. The doomsayers had been dead wrong, though they did make a lot of money. Life continued as it had always con- tinued. The Y 2K scare had been yet another failed doomsday prediction. It has been said that man is not a rational being, but a rationalizing being.1 By this, I mean that, by nature, humans are not consistent in their beliefs and behavior, but inconsistent, and uncomfortably so. The psychic discomfort caused by this inconsistency—that is between belief and behavior, or between expectations and reality—creates the need in indi- viduals to justify or, in some other way, account for and therefore mini- mize the discrepancy. Disappointment is part of the human experience. How humans respond to dashed hopes, both as individuals and within a social context, provides sociologists and social psychologists an interest- ing glimpse into the rationalizing tendencies of the human mind. Perhaps the best-known example of such a discrepancy between expectation and reality is that of the failed prophecy. Time and again, endtime expectation and prophetic failure have presented committed believers with an interesting and persistent cognitive challenge: the problem of dissonance. Theoretically, cognitive dissonance arises when the beliefs, values, or opinions individuals hold (that is, their cogni- tions) come into conflict with their experience of reality. When disso- nance occurs, there tend to arise countervailing psychological pressures within persons that cause them to seek ways of reducing or eliminating dissonance. In most cases, people respond to dissonance by bringing their thoughts in line with their experiences, that is, by abandoning their mistaken cognitions. In a few cases, however, the dissonance between what one believes will happen and what in fact does happen is not so easily resolved, especially if the conflicting beliefs or opinions have arisen from deeply-held religious convictions.2 For those researchers who have been fascinated by millenarian and predictive prophecy movements, the most interesting question has not been, Why haven’t their prophecies come true? but, What happens when their prophecies fail? How do people and their movements with- stand so great a disappointment? How is it possible, in the face of obvi- ous disconfirmation, for faith to survive unaffected? For over half a century now, speculation on responses of groups and individuals to failed prophecies has occupied the attention of a growing number of 73 NR1204_05 2/18/09 12:49 PM Page 74 Nova Religio psychologists and sociologists of religion. In fact, the question of failed prophecy continues to intrigue scholars, and perhaps even more so after the uneventful change from year 1999 to year 2000. In this essay I would like to reassess the research on failed prophecy that has emerged over the past half century. My purpose will not simply be to review the findings of these studies, but to question the assump- tions that researchers have made, assumptions that have shaped their understanding of prophecy and dissonance, the role that prophecy plays in a religious movement, and the ability of prophets and their fol- lowers to manage dissonance by minimizing or trivializing the impor- tance of disconfirmation. An interesting aspect of the research that has been conducted into prophecy and dissonance is that the original the- sis that was put forth in 1956 by Leon Festinger and his team of researchers has held true: despite obvious and unequivocal disconfir- mation, people tend to respond to failed prophecy in ways that reaffirm their faith. First, before coming to my criticisms, and before offering alternative lines of inquiry into the problem of prophecy and disso- nance, let me rehearse the theory presented by Festinger and his col- leagues and then provide a sense of the direction that subsequent research into failed prophecy has taken. WHEN PROPHECY FAILS The social-psychological consequences of prophetic disconfirmation were addressed over fifty years ago by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter in their landmark case study, When Prophecy Fails, subtitled, A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World.3 Their main thesis is stated somewhat obliquely: Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.4 In its basic formulation, then, the theory Festinger and his colleagues advanced stated that an unequivocal disconfirmation of a prophesied event, in this case the expectation of a destructive flood and the mirac- ulous rescue of the group’s members by spaceships, creates a crisis of unbelief. This crisis is especially acute for those who have risked their jobs and reputations in support of their belief in the end of the world— as was the case with “The Seekers,” the pseudonym of the spirit-contact 74 NR1204_05 2/18/09 12:49 PM Page 75 Stone: Prophecy and Dissonance group that Festinger observed before, during, and after the crisis. As Festinger then argued: The disconfirmation introduces an important and painful dissonance. The fact that the predicted events did not occur is dissonant with continuing to believe both the prediction and the remainder of the ideology of which the prediction was the central item. The failure of the prediction is also dissonant with all the actions that the believer took in preparation for its fulfillment. The magnitude of the dissonance will, of course, depend on the importance of the belief to the individual and on the magnitude of his preparatory activity.5 Furthermore, according to Festinger, while the best course of action for shaken believers would have been to discard their discredited beliefs and return to their former lives, “frequently the behavioral commit- ment to the belief system is so strong that almost any other course of action is preferable.” Indeed, they noted, “It may even be less painful to tolerate the dissonance than to discard the belief and admit that one had been wrong.”6 To Festinger’s surprise, however, in the face of obvious prophetic dis- confirmation, the group they studied sought to reduce dissonance by actively proselytizing, that is, by telling people that their prediction had in fact been correct. What is more, because of their faith, God had spared the world. Thus, as the Festinger thesis asserts, if believers can convince outsiders of the truth of their message, perhaps persuading them to become members or supporters, this will reaffirm their faith, thereby serving to reduce the dissonance they feel in the face of dis- confirmation. To quote Festinger on this point: The dissonance cannot be eliminated completely by denying or rationalizing the disconfirmation.