English
On the night of December 20, the group huddled in a living room, waiting. Midnight struck. Nothing happened. 12:05 a.m. Silence. By 4:00 a.m., the group sat in stunned, weeping despair. The "logic" of their world had collapsed.
Suddenly, the despair vanished. Instead of feeling foolish, the cult members became more fervent than ever. They didn't just stay in the group; they began calling newspapers and proselytizing on street corners, more desperate to convince others than they had been before the failed prophecy. The Theory is Born A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
From this observation, Festinger formalized his . He argued that we have an inner drive to keep our attitudes and beliefs in harmony. When we hold two "inconsistent" thoughts—like "I am a rational person" and "I just waited all night for a spaceship that didn't come"—we experience a state of psychological distress called dissonance . On the night of December 20, the group
Afterward, the researchers paid some students $20 to lie to the next participant and say the task was "fun." They paid another group only $1 to tell the same lie. The results were counterintuitive: Cognitive Dissonance Theory: A Crash Course 12:05 a
German