Of Flying Saucers and Social Scientists: A Re-Reading of When Prophecy Fails and of Cognitive Dissonance

What happens when prophecies fail? Timothy Jenkins' re-reading of Leon Festinger's classic work on "cognitive dissonance" seeks to answer this question by studying a 50s doomsday group. This volume explores the relations between anthropology and psychology, and between social scientific and natural scientific accounts of human behavior.

Preface Introduction: The issue of the scale of the event one object or three parties? PART I: THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE VARIOUS PARTIES The social scientists The group and the mediums The press PART II: THE EVENTS AND THEIR RATIONALE The sociology of secrecy. Language of science, language of secrecy. A dialogue of the deaf. Gains Bibliography