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When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World is a classic work of social psychology by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, published in 1956, detailing a study of a small UFO religion in Chicago called the Seekers that believed in an imminent apocalypse.
Combating Cult Mind Control is a nonfiction book by Steven Hassan, first published in 1988.The book presents itself as a guide to resisting the mind control practices of destructive cults, and focuses on the research of Margaret Singer and Robert Lifton as well as the cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger.
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as the mental phenomenon of people existing with unwittingly and fundamentally conflicting cognition. [1] Being confronted by situations that challenge this dissonance may ultimately result in some change in their cognitions or actions to cause greater alignment between them so as to reduce this dissonance. [2]
The group constantly exhorts members to view the world as black and white, conform to the group ideology, and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here. Confession. The group defines sins that members should confess either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group.
The Great Disappointment is viewed by some scholars as an example of the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. [45] The theory was proposed by Leon Festinger to describe the formation of new beliefs and increased proselytizing in order to reduce the tension, or dissonance, that results from failed prophecies. [46]
Disconfirmed expectancy is a psychological term for what is commonly known as a failed prophecy.According to the American social psychologist Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, disconfirmed expectancies create a state of psychological discomfort because the outcome contradicts expectancy.
A thought-terminating cliché (also known as a semantic stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or cliché thinking) is a form of loaded language, often passing as folk wisdom, intended to end an argument and quell cognitive dissonance.
Groupthink is a construct of social psychology but has an extensive reach and influences literature in the fields of communication studies, political science, management, and organizational theory, [4] as well as important aspects of deviant religious cult behaviour. [5] [6]