When “When Prophecy Fails” Fails (E350)
The 1956 book When Prophecy Fails describes one of the most famous case studies in social psychology. The researchers Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter covertly joined a small, apocalyptic UFO group, observing how members prepared, including quitting jobs, giving away possessions, and severing ties with skeptics. According to the book, when the group’s predicted disaster did not occur, instead of simply abandoning their beliefs, many core members strengthened their commitment and actively sought new converts.
But it didn’t actually happen like that. In truth, Festinger and his fellow researchers glossed over evidence that contradicted their thesis and actively influenced the UFO group to get the result they wanted.
This is the discovery of our guest Thomas Kelly. By combing through newly unsealed materials from Festinger’s archives, UFO and occult magazines of the 1950s, later writings by group leader Dorothy Martin, he discovered crucial information that was omitted by the original book. Kelly detailed his startling findings in a paper published in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences titled Debunking “When Prophecy Fails.”
Travis interviews Kelly to discuss the real story behind When Prophecy Fails, the possible consequences of invalidating Festinger’s study, and how his work fits in the wider “replication crisis” in experimental psychology.
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The first five episodes of Annie Kelly’s new 6-part podcast miniseries “Truly Tradly Deeply” are available to Cursed Media subscribers.
Cursed Media subscribers also get access to every episode of every QAA miniseries we produced, including Manclan by Julian Feeld and Annie Kelly, Trickle Down by Travis View, The Spectral Voyager by Jake Rockatansky and Brad Abrahams, and Perverts by Julian Feeld and Liv Agar. Plus, Cursed Media subscribers will get access to at least three new exclusive podcast miniseries every year.
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
SOURCES
Debunking “When Prophecy Fails”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jhbs.70043
Debunking “When Prophecy Fails” (Free Preprint Version)
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/9j7qc_v2
Failed Prophecies Are Fatal
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/IJSNR/article/view/33085/32543
Cults, Conscripts, and College Boys: Whither Cognitive Dissonance? (Preprint)
Comments (53)
Debunking debunking is the essence of rational progress. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, mthrfks!
I wish more QAA episodes were like this one. Something about the lack of [bleeped] death threats and tangents based on references I don't get made this one refreshing.
Do you know that you're raising one eyebrow in your avi? FYI.
great!
Nice to have Travis in the driver's seat after several episodes where he's had little participation. The topic is pretty important to the Qanon discussion. Also thanks for giving me cognitive dissonance about cognitive dissonance
You're telling me the researchers formed a belief, sequestered themselves from normal society due to it, encountered emphatic disconfirmation of it, and doubled down? Someone ought to write a paper about that.
Great podcasts. Prolific output. Soul melting news beat. I hope you all take a break sometimes too.
Great episode, the Kelly Clan remains undefeated
Travis is my least favorite part of this podcast, but now seems to have become the main character. Related, I assume, but why would you split your content instead of just putting it all here like everyone else? Money?
Super dumb comment, btw.
Great episode, enjoyed a bit of solo Travis time, though I love everyone on the team. Since signing up on Patreon in May I've gone through the entire premium backlog. This episode marks me completing my catch-up! I'll now be looking forward to listening along in real time. Thank you, QAA crew, for the hundreds of hours of company!
Is anyone studying the effect of 'When Psychology Fails'? Like do they double down?
This is an absolutely fantastic episode. Travis, I really appreciate your optimism and perspective— I’m currently getting my MSW right now, and I did a bit of research (a VERY little bit) on the “revolution” in psychology/ behavioral science that made people really reconsider how we had been conducting experiments and how poor the replication rates were. It’s hard to find good research— and harder to know which research is good when you’re not deeply ensconced in the field. Your perspective is nice; rather than looking at another potentially misinterpreted/poorly represented keystone study as some sort of “loss” to academia, it’s a “win” towards humanity— insofar that it actually gives people a lot more credit and opens the door to more charitable (and correct!) ways of interpreting human behavior. Thank you for the episode, and thank you, Thomas Kelly, for your work!! I’ll have to look up the paper and read it, because this is fascinating!!
Can you also do an wo about evolutionary psychology?
I don't mean to dismiss Kelly out of hand - because there are major problems with When Prophecy Fails - but, as reported by former QAA guest Anna Merlen, he writes about biosecurity and health research for reactionary outlets like Federalist, City Journal and recently wrote a piece for Tablet "express[ing] concern about gain-of-function virology research, and gives credence to the idea that Covid-19 was created in a lab." Again, I don't think he's completely wrong, but I do think he is not a sociologist and seems to largely be doing this work because he has a bone to pick with the social sciences as a whole.
The "replication crisis" is also (largely) a reactionary dog whistle wielded against the social sciences in order to make them appear fraudulent or sloppy when the phenomenon is multifaceted and is largely a result of how science is funded rather than how it is conducted. I hate to get in the comments and complain about people's hard work but this is a really frustrating conversation to listen to and I wish a little more work had been done before bringing this guy on (or maybe the work was done and I'm being an asshole and just misunderstood the political position of this podcast). Either way, I'm writing because I think y'all are about as good as podcasts come and this conversation is such an aberration from the norm. I hope it's taken constructively because I think extremely highly of your work.
♾ ☭ 🖤 ☭ ♾
Thank you!
This reminds me of the great paper from Fisher about how Mendel's bean experiment findings are extremely statistically improbable and more likely fraudulent than true. He probably derived the principle and then made up the numbers
I enjoyed this episode. Travis and a guest without interruptions is sometimes just what I need.
Awesome episode. I feel like I got a bonus Trickle Down!
Sir, a 4th Kelly has hit the QAA network.
when you stare into the debunking sometimes the debunking stares back
Thomas Kelly was also the guest on Conspirituality this week, worth a listen for their angle and discussion too. Remski does the interview.
“I guess I had fun with Unc Travis… but his house is clean. And he makes me learn stuff.”
Fyi "independent researcher" doesn't mean working outside your field, it generally means you're not affiliated with a university.
Soon as I first learned of this I thought at that very moment "ooh how long till Travis covers this on QAA?" lol
You have a bit of a doubling at the end of the episode- around 46 mins. That said, really liked this episode, glad to see this kind of research highlighted!
My ears or is this really blurry and bassy? Weird.
Honestly the idea that the reinterpreting effect was exaggerated does really explain something that always bothered me about the Epistles of St. Paul. In some of the later Pauline Epistles*, he seems to be reassuring people that the fact that Christ has not returned isn't a problem, which, if "When Project Fails" is to be believed, he wouldn't have had to do *The Epistles of St. Paul are typically divided into 3 types: Undisputed/Pauline (1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon), Disputed/Deuteropauline (2nd Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians) and Pseudoepigraphic/Pastoral (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus). Almost everyone agrees that the first set was written by Paul, a lot of people will believe some of the second set, and only very committed Christian readers tend to attribute the third set. Pretty much nobody thinks Hebrews is from Paul, because it's not an Epistle, and he wrote Epistles.
Travis View
It turns out the real apocalyptic alien flood was the cults we made along the way
I've been looking forward to this episode since I saw the initial reporting that this book had been re-examined. The news struck me mostly because I'd heard Travis reference it a few times over the years. Looking forward to hearing him talk about this with Kelly
Love it when Travis gets the space to stretch his brain muscle, and ours.
This is peak solo Travis. Fascinating episode. Great guest
When is thr mtg episode
They talked about MTG's antiTrump turn fairly recently. I don't think her planned resignation warrants another episode, even though I think it's very interesting that she is resigning.
You guys need some more surnames. How many Kellys can one pod contains wtf
the ultimate goal is to acquire every Kelly
Haven't listened yet, but will (of course). But my initial reaction? "Nooo... not another person with the name of "Kelly" in the QAA Universe!" (lol)
Have they had November on yet?
oak park illinois mention lets fucking go
More interviews with academics please!!!! Great ep
I really liked this episode and the guest you had on. It was really educational and interesting.
@41:20 I think you definitely have something there with "textual interpretation" because that's exactly what happens every time there's a false rapture prediction.
Travis View ❤️
Kudos to Travis for finding an educational way to admit he’s owned
Love that this is a very Travis topic. I hope fans appreciate it as much as I do.
travis has deboonked so hard that he turned the deboonking on himself
Damn solo Travis that's wild. Educate meeeeeee
The indictments are sealed folks
Liv agar
Liv Agar-er