The person may have prepared himself psychologically for an event that never eventuates, and, worse still, may have even made public his predictions about the event. What happens when an important prophecy fails and dissonance is aroused between what was predicted and what actually occurred is described in the classic field study carried out by Festinger, Riecken and Schachter (1956). In the mid-1950s Mrs Marion Keech, a suburban housewife, began to receive messages from outer space. Americans and Canadians were intrigued because Mrs Keech claimed that the message foretold an impending flood that would inundate all of North America on December 21. The publicity given to Mrs Keech and her messages attracted a small following of believers, as well as Festinger, Riecken and Schachter, who infiltrated the group in order to see how Mrs Keech would react on December 22. On December 20 Mrs Keech received a message informing her that the group should be ready to receive a visitor who would arrive at midnight to transport all of them on a flying saucer to the safety of outer space. Midnight came, but no visitor arrived, and the predicted flood was less than seven hours away. Gradually despair and confusion descended upon the group, and Mrs Keech broke down and began to cry bitterly. The messages were read and reread in case some clue had been overlooked. One explanation after another of the visitor’s failure to appear was considered and rejected. Then at 4.45 a.m. Mrs Keech called the group together and announced she had received a message. In the style of an Old Testament prophet she announced that God had saved the world from destruction because the little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that it, and not water, was now flooding the Earth.
Mrs Keech handled the dissonance existing between the drastic prophecy and the mundane reality by providing a rationalization for the discrepancy between the two. But she also had to deal with the widespread publicity she had received in the mass media. One way of reducing dissonance is to seek the support of others; if others provide social support the individual is better able to convince himself that his belief was correct. Mrs Keech and the believers, who had been rather shy of publicity before the disconfirmation, now became insatiable publicity seekers and carried out active attempts at proselytization in order to swell the numbers of supporters. In case one is tempted to feel smug about Mrs Keech’s disconfirmed expectancy, it is appropriate to point out that social psychologists also suffer the dissonance of disconfirmed expectations. In 1960, Hardyck and Braden (1962) investigated a group of “faithful” evangelists who prophesied a widespread nuclear disaster on August 15. The disaster did not eventuate but neither did the group seek publicity or social support for their beliefs. Other prophets of doom, completely out of touch with reality, apparently suffer little dissonance when their expectancies are disconfirmed. Thomas Beverly, rector of Lilley, in Hertfordshire, England in the late 17th century was totally immune to cognitive dissonance. In 1695 Beverly wrote a book predicting that the world would end in 1697. In 1698 he wrote a second book complaining that the world had ended in 1697 but that nobody had noticed. It is clear that disconfirmed expectancies may lead to a variety of reactions, not all of them directed toward the reduction of dissonance. It seems that the good people of Hertfordshire have a penchant for prophecy. A religious society placed an advertisement in the local newspaper on Monday, December 9, 1968: “The world is definitely coming to an end on Wednesday December 11, at noon precisely. A full report will appear in this newspaper next Friday . . .”
(Social Psychology, Leon Mann, John Wiley & Sons Australasia 1969, pages 123-124)