To stop the pain of that inconsistency, we must change something. We can: Leave the cult (the rarest path). Change the belief: "The prophecy was wrong." Add new cognitions: "We saved the world with our faith". The peg-turning experiment
To prove this wasn't just about cults, Festinger and James Carlsmith conducted a now-famous experiment. They asked students to perform a mind-numbingly boring task: turning wooden pegs on a board for an hour. 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 . To stop the pain of that inconsistency, we
To stop the pain of that inconsistency, we must change something. We can: Leave the cult (the rarest path). Change the belief: "The prophecy was wrong." Add new cognitions: "We saved the world with our faith". The peg-turning experiment
To prove this wasn't just about cults, Festinger and James Carlsmith conducted a now-famous experiment. They asked students to perform a mind-numbingly boring task: turning wooden pegs on a board for an hour.
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 .
