Is Cognitive Dissonance Actually a Thing?

"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."

An 8.0-magnitude 1934 earthquake in eastern India killed thousands and prompted rumors of an even larger impending disaster in less-damaged areas. Leon Festinger developed cognitive dissonance theory to explain why people held anxiety-affirming beliefs when outcomes contradicted their emotions. Festinger observed a Chicago-area group, the Seekers, who claimed to receive alien messages predicting a continental flood, and he interpreted their persistence as efforts to reduce dissonance. Festinger argued that people facing contradictory information either change beliefs or reject counterevidence, seek agreement, and attempt persuasion. New research now challenges the accuracy of the 1956 study that documented these events.

Read at The New Yorker