Useful Delusions by Shankar Vedantam

Author:Shankar Vedantam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2020-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

7

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.

Ambrose Bierce

In the early 1950s, a Chicago housewife named Dorothy Martin—a dabbler in automatic writing and Scientology, and, like Don Lowry, a fan of the novel Lost Horizon—began receiving messages beamed into her head from a distant planet called “Clarion.” The messages warned that a “supreme being” was going to cause a series of devastating natural disasters that would destroy the earth. Only those who joined her movement would be saved, spirited away to safety by a UFO that was to arrive at her home four days before the great cataclysm was to begin: an enormous flood that would submerge the city of Chicago on December 21, 1955.

Martin’s prophecy attracted a determined band of followers, many of whom quit their jobs and gave up their homes to prepare for the end times. Some were drawn by newspaper advertisements that proclaimed the end of the world. The advertisements also caught the eye of a young University of Minnesota psychologist named Leon Festinger, who infiltrated the group in hopes of studying the after-effects of a prophecy that failed to materialize. He fully expected Martin’s followers to lose their faith. But when December 21 came and went without floods or UFOs, the most committed of Martin’s followers grew stronger in their commitment. They doubled down.

Festinger documented his experiences in his book When Prophecies Fail. His great contribution was the concept of cognitive dissonance: It is painful to hold opposing ideas in our minds, and we seek ways to relieve this conflict. Martin’s followers deeply believed in the prophecy. If they were to admit they were wrong, they would also have to acknowledge that giving up their homes and quitting their jobs was foolish. They would have to admit their devotion to the cause was irrational and misguided. At the same time, the facts were telling them that they had made a mistake. As Festinger discovered, holding opposing notions is painful, and people look for ways to remove this source of pain. If sacrificing the facts can ease the unpleasant feeling, the facts turn out to be expendable.

Cognitive dissonance helps explain a lot about the world—from voters who refuse to acknowledge they made a mistake in electing a demagogue to organizations that fail to back away from misguided policies, even in the face of mounting evidence. It also helps explain why members of the Church of Love continued to cling to their beliefs, even as details of the scam were revealed. As I learned the details of Joseph Enriquez’s final months as a member of the Church of Love—and the way he looks back on those years—I found it hard not to think about Dorothy Martin and Leon Festinger.

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