When Prophecy Fails: The Story of a UFO Cult, Cognitive Dissonance, and Belief Perseverance
Continuing with my series of overviews of cognitive biases, we have “cognitive dissonance” and “belief perseverance”.
The story of how cognitive dissonance and belief perseverance were first recognized or described in Social Psychology is an interesting story to me. It involves the sociological study of a 1950s UFO cult by the psychologists Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter . This was published in their book, When Prophecy Fails in 1956. I originally read this book in the ’90s. The group’s leader claimed to be in contact with extraterrestrials (through automatic writing if I remember right) and they told her the earth would be destroyed in effect (except her and her followers) on a certain date in 1954. It didn’t happen of course. So, how did they react to this “prophecy” not coming true? that’s where what Festinger called cognitive dissonance and belief perseverance comes in.
I have put the two cognitive biases together here as they tend to go together as in the UFO cult studied by Festinger. When a person’s belief is challenged by information or facts that contradict their belief, this causes phycological or emotional stress that needs to be resolved (“cognitive dissonance” – why didn’t the aliens show up as they said they would?). Many if not most people try to hang on to and defend their beliefs when presented with contradictory info, rather than change their belief or admit their beliefs were flat out wrong (“belief perseverance”). This is true, even when the belief to outsiders, not committed to the belief, seems to have been conclusively refuted (the aliens never showed up, your channeler is a fraud, deal with it). That is the bottom line takeaway from their research.
Here is a short video on Festinger, cognitive dissonance, and the UFO cult he studied:
End of Days Cults, The Day After
Here’s a longer podcast on Leon Festinger and the UFO “cult”:
Leon Festinger and the Alien Apocalypse
Cognitive Dissonance and Belief Perseverance
Here’s a Wikipedia entry on cognitive dissonance:
The contradiction of a belief… causes cognitive dissonance that can be resolved by changing the challenged belief, yet, instead of effecting change, the resultant mental stress restores psychological consonance to the person by misperception, rejection, or refutation of the contradiction, seeking moral support from people who share the contradicted beliefs or acting to persuade other people that the contradiction is unreal.[9][10]:123
The early hypothesis of belief contradiction presented in When Prophecy Fails (1956) reported that faith deepened among the members of an apocalyptic religious cult, despite the failed prophecy of an alien spacecraft soon to land on Earth to rescue them from earthly corruption. At the determined place and time, the cult assembled; they believed that only they would survive planetary destruction; yet the spaceship did not arrive to Earth. The confounded prophecy caused them acute cognitive-dissonance: Had they been victims of a hoax? Had they vainly donated away their material possessions? To resolve the dissonance between apocalyptic, end-of-the-world religious beliefs and earthly, material reality, most of the cult restored their psychological consonance by choosing to believe a less mentally-stressful idea to explain the missed landing: that the aliens had given planet Earth a second chance at existence, …
– Cognitive Dissonance, Wikipedia, section on Belief Disconfirmation.
Wikipedia defines belief perseverance this way:
Belief perseverance (also known as conceptual conservatism[1]) is maintaining a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it.[2] Such beliefs may even be strengthened when others attempt to present evidence debunking them, a phenomenon known as the backfire effect (compare boomerang effect)
Since rationality involves conceptual flexibility,[6][7] belief perseverance is consistent with the view that human beings act at times in an irrational manner. Philosopher F.C.S. Schiller holds that belief perseverance “deserves to rank among the fundamental ‘laws’ of nature”.[8]
So again, the lesson to be learned about cognitive dissonance and belief perseverance is that when presented with evidence that what we believe is wrong, rather than modify or abandon our belief, or at least go back to the drawing board and re-examine our belief and verify the new facts, we are more likely to resolve the disturbing or stressful “dissonance” by rejecting or downplaying the new facts and try and shore up our old beliefs. This is usually with an ad hoc or even absurd or at least implausible explanation on how we were right all along or at least not too far off, thus saving our ego and easing the dissonance between our belief and reality.
It can be hard to admit you are flat out wrong, especially when the belief you have is something you are personally, emotionally, or financially invested in. Like all cognitive biases, it’s harder to see it and to deal with it honestly in yourself, but far too easy to see, or think you see it, in others, especially those in your out-group.
See further:
Cognitive Dissonance Phsychology Today
When Prophecy Fails: The Sequel – We Can’t Learn if We’re Never Wrong
The book When Prophecy Fails can be found at:
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