Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [268]
For some years after Lewin’s death, Festinger, who moved to the University of Minnesota, wore Lewin’s mantle, thanks to his fine intellect, the excitement he brought to teaching, and the daring with which he undertook research that overstepped the boundaries of propriety to obtain otherwise unavailable data. In part he was emulating Lewin’s boldness, but in part expressing his own personality. A peppery fellow of moderate size and a lover of cribbage and chess, both of which he played with fierce competitiveness, Festinger had the tough, brash, aggressive spirit so often found in men who grew up between the world wars on the tempestuous Lower East Side of New York.
A prime instance of Festinger’s boldness and unconventionality was a research project in which he and two young colleagues, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter (who had been his student at MIT), acted as undercover agents for seven weeks. They had read a newspaper story, in September 1954, about a Mrs. Marian Keech (not her real name), a housewife in a town not far from Minneapolis, who claimed that for nearly a year she had been receiving messages from superior beings she identified as the Guardians on the planet Clarion. (The messages came in the form of automatic writing that she produced while in a trance.) She revealed to the press that on December 21, according to the Guardians, a great flood would cover the northern hemisphere, and all who lived there, except a chosen few, would perish.
Festinger, who was already working out his theory, and his junior colleagues saw a golden opportunity to study cognitive dissonance at first hand. As they stated their hypothesis in When Prophecy Fails, the report they published in 1956:
Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before.20
The three social psychologists felt that Mrs. Keech’s public statements and the ensuing events would be an invaluable real-life demonstration of the development of a paradoxical response to contradictory evidence. They called on Mrs. Keech, introducing themselves as a businessman and two friends who were impressed by her story and wanted to know more. Riecken gave his real name, but Schachter, who had an irrepressible sense of humor, introduced himself as Leon Festinger, leaving a stunned Festinger no option but to say he was Stanley Schachter and maintain that identity in all his contacts with Mrs. Keech and her followers.21
Mrs. Keech, they learned, had already gathered a small coterie that met regularly, was making plans for the future, and was awaiting final directions from the planet Clarion. The team drew up a research plan calling for the three of them, plus five student assistants, to be “covert participant observers.” In the guise of true believers, they visited cult members and took part in their meetings sixty times over a seven-week period. Some visits lasted only an hour or two, but others involved non-stop séance-like sessions running twelve to fourteen hours. The research was physically and emotionally exhausting, partly because of the strain of concealing their reactions to the absurd goings-on at the meetings, and partly because of the difficulty of making a record of the words of a Guardian as voiced by Mrs. Keech and others in their trances. As Festinger later recalled:
At intervals infrequent enough not to arouse comment, each of us