The Rapture and Cognitive Dissonance

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that the world is coming to an end tomorrow, May 21. According to doomsday forecaster Harold Camping, Armageddon will occur at 6:00 PM, though apparently there is a little confusion about the timezone. In any event, if Sunday dawns and there is still no rapture, Camping will have a lot of explaining to do. There will also be a lot of what psychologists call cognitive dissonance–the intensely unpleasant feeling that occurs with any clash of beliefs and facts–followed by attempts to justify the wrongheaded beliefs.

Interestingly, the idea of cognitive dissonance had its origins in very similar circumstances. Here are the events of a half century ago, originally observed and described by psychologist Leon Festinger in When Prophecy Fails, and recounted more recently by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson in their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me):

Festinger infiltrated a religious group who believed the world would end on December 20 at midnight. The group’s leader, whom Festinger called Marian Keech, promised that the faithful would be picked up by a flying saucer and flown to salvation, and many of her followers quit their jobs and gave away their homes and savings in anticipation of the end. At midnight, there was no sign of the spaceship; at 2:00 AM, still no sign, and the gathered followers were getting edgy. At 4:45 AM, Mrs. Keech announced that she had just had a new vision: The world had been spared, she told her followers, because of their faith.

The group’s mood shifted from despair to exhilaration. Many, who had not actively proselytized before December 21, began calling the press to report the miracle, and soon they were on the streets, trying to convert new followers. This is exactly what Festinger had predicted: He had said that those followers who had not made a strong commitment to the prophecy–those who waited at home alone, hoping they would not die–would quietly abandon their faith. But he predicted that those who had made a dramatic commitment by giving away their homes and positions would intensify their faith in Mrs. Keech, which they did. Festinger labeled the discomfort driving such rationalization cognitive dissonance–now a bedrock principle of psychology.

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