The QAnon "Storm" didn't happen. Jesus didn't come back in 1844 either. But what happens next? Here's the original paper "When Prophecy Fails."

In 1954 Leon Festinger, a brilliant young experimental social psychologist in the process of inventing a new theory of human behavior - the theory of cognitive dissonance - and two of his colleagues, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter, infiltrated a cult who believed the end of the world was only months away. How would these people feel when their prophecy remained unfulfilled? Would they admit the error of their prediction, or would they, as Festinger predicted, readjust their reality to make sense of the new circumstances? Not only is When Prophecy Fails of great historical importance as the first test of a powerful theory, but it is also a surprisingly touching account of what happens to ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1df3/50a8638ab04f6a2f08623646a40d56dbb40c.pdf?_ga=2.80728208.601859793.1611268765-1976243234.1611268765



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2021 05:47PM by anybody.

I was a Mormon missionary in Finland 1974-1976. The JWs were everywhere proclaiming the end of the world in 1975. We had 40 baptisms in the entire country that year and the JWs had thousands. Well the world did not end. They lost a third of their membership the following year. Now the entire fiasco has been whitewashed and new JWs, that I have talked to, are not even aware of the false prophecy or they blame it on over zealous members. It the JW stats are to believed they now have a larger active membership than the Mormon church. False prophesies seem to only have a modest ephemeral affect.