When Prophecy Fails - Couverture souple

Festinger, Professor Leon; Riecken, Henry; Schachter, Stanley

 
9781891396984: When Prophecy Fails

Synopsis

2011 reprint of 1956 First edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. When Prophecy Fails [1956] is a classic text in social psychology authored by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. It chronicles the experience of a UFO cult that believed the end of the world was at hand. In effect, it is a social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world, and the adjustments made when the prediction failed to materialize. "The authors have done something as laudable as it is unusual for social psychologists. They espied a fleeting social movement important to a line of research they were interested in and took after it. They recruited a team of observers, joined the movement, and watched it from within under great difficulties until its crisis came and went. Their report is of interest as much for the method as for the substance."-Everett C. Hughes, The American Journal of Sociology.

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Présentation de l'éditeur

In the summer of 1954, just as the “Flying Saucer Contactee” movement was taking off in America, a middle-aged housewife named Dorothy Martin (here renamed “Mrs. Marian Keech”) began receiving messages from the Space Brothers via automatic writing. They told her a world-destroying flood would occur on December 21st that would cleave the United States in two, and kill millions. A circle of disciples, dubbed “The Truth Seekers,” gathered around her, commissioned by the Space Brothers to warn the world of the approaching cataclysm, and to prepare themselves to be taken to safety on other planets in flying saucers. When their story appeared in the newspaper, social psychologist Leon Festinger, who was sure the prophesied flood would not actually occur, saw a a golden opportunity to study – first-hand, in real time – the effects of failed prophecy on believers. If the world was still standing on December 22nd, and no Space Brothers in flying saucers had appeared to the faithful, would “The Truth Seekers” abandon their beliefs? If not, how would they process and rationalize the failed prediction? Festinger and several colleagues infiltrated the group. “When Prophecy Fails” is their fascinating, hour by hour, inside account of the days leading up to, and following, December 21st, 1954. The New Paradigm Press edition of this classic of both UFOlogy and psychology includes a bonus image gallery, “The Truth Seekers In Context: Famous Flying Saucer/Space Brother Contactee Narratives of the 1950s.”

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