The New Yorker:

A foundational 1956 study of the concept, focussed on a U.F.O. doomsday cult, has been all but debunked by new research.

By Shayla Love

In 1934, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit eastern India, killing thousands and devastating several cities. Curiously, in areas that were spared the worst destruction, stories soon spread that an even bigger disaster was on its way. Leon Festinger, a young American psychologist at the University of Minnesota, read about these rumors in the early nineteen-fifties and was puzzled. Festinger didn’t think people would voluntarily adopt anxiety-inducing ideas. Instead, he reasoned, the rumors could better be described as “anxiety justifying.” Some had felt the earth shake and were overwhelmed with fear. When the outcome—they were spared—didn’t match their emotions, they embraced predictions that affirmed their fright.

Festinger was developing the now ubiquitous theory of cognitive dissonance. He argued that, when people encounter contradictions, they experience so much discomfort that they feel an urgent need to reduce it. In response, a person can update his views—or he can misinterpret, and even reject, whatever information has challenged his beliefs. He might seek out people who agree with him; he might try to persuade those who don’t. “A man with a conviction is a hard man to change,” Festinger later wrote. “Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” Cognitive dissonance helped explain human choices that otherwise seemed irrational, stubborn, and shortsighted: these were, in fact, attempts to reduce psychological distress.

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