Leon Festinger: 4 ideas worth knowing

4 ideas from Leon Festinger, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

When a cult's prophecy fails, believers get more devoted, not less
In 1954, Leon Festinger infiltrated a group that believed the world would end on a specific date. When the date passed uneventfully, the group didn't abandon its belief — it recrui…
— Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken & Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails
You can't judge your own abilities without comparing yourself to someone else
Leon Festinger proposed that people have a built-in drive to evaluate their own opinions and abilities, and when no objective yardstick exists, they measure themselves against othe…
— Leon Festinger, A Theory of Social Comparison Processes
Paid $1 to lie about a boring task, people ended up believing the lie
In 1959, Festinger and Carlsmith had participants tell a waiting 'subject' that a tedious task was fascinating, paying some $1 and others $20 to do it. The $1 liars later rated the…
— Leon Festinger and James M. Carlsmith, Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance
Who you became friends with was decided by which door you happened to live near
In a 1950 study of a postwar student housing complex, Festinger, Schachter and Back mapped friendships and found physical distance mattered more than shared interests: people two d…
— Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, Kurt Back, Social Pressures in Informal Groups

Five ideas worth knowing, every week