Living With False Prophets

This week, I talk about the doomsday religion that social psychology Leon Festinger studied in the 1950s. His studies led him to develop his theory of cognitive dissonance. The concept of cognitive dissonance has been with us for a long time (Wikipedia points out an example from Aesops Fables), but Festinger was the first to coin the term. In doing so, he launched a line of research that has been really fascinating...