19.6: Belief Disconfirmation and Dissonance

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The fourth dissonance phenomenon, and the last one we will study, involves the disconfirmation of someone’s belief (a belief is disconfirmed when there is clear evidence that it is false). Information that is inconsistent with our beliefs can produce dissonance. This can lead us to avoid the information, or to ignore it, or to dismiss, or to attack the people who convey it to us (we have encountered all these strategies before).

Sometimes, however, it becomes so obvious that the belief is false that tactics like these simply will not work. The disconfirmation of a belief can produce dissonance, since we felt like it was true, and if we acted on the basis of the non-disconfirmed belief, the possibilities for dissonance are especially strong. We will now consider a very interesting, real-life example of this.

When Prophecy Fails

In 1954, Leon Festinger came across a newspaper account of a small “doomsday” cult who believed that the world would end on December 21. His coworkers infiltrated the group and observed the members’ behavior. The group members were very committed to their beliefs. They had gotten rid of all their possessions (who needs a toaster when the world is about to end?) and were genuinely preparing for the world to end.

December 21 came and went, and the world didn’t end. This dramatically disconfirmed the group leader’s prediction, and we might expect that the members of the group would have lost their faith and left. Members of the group who were alone on December 21 did lose their faith, but those who were with the rest of the group did just the opposite. They concluded that their own actions had postponed the end—though it would arrive soon— and this seemed to strengthen their faith. Before their belief had been disconfirmed, members of the group hadn’t done much to convince others to join them, but after the disconfirmation, they worked hard to convert others to their own position. Their new belief, that their actions had delayed the end of the world, restored the consistency between their belief in the head of the group and the fact that they had given away everything they owned, on the one hand, and the fact that her prophecy failed, on the other.