ORIGINAL ARTICLE
First published: 04 November 2025
Public significance: When Prophecy Fails is one of the most influential case studies in 20th-century social science. It helped launch the theory of cognitive dissonance, shaped popular understandings of how belief survives disconfirmation, and became a touchstone for explaining the origins of religious movements—including Christianity. But the case was misrepresented. The cult did not persist, proselytize, or reinterpret its failure as a spiritual triumph. Its leader recanted, the group disbanded, and belief dissolved. This article shows that the authors of When Prophecy Fails misled their readers—and that scholars in psychology, sociology, and religious studies have been building theories atop a collapsed foundation.
ABST…
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
First published: 04 November 2025
Public significance: When Prophecy Fails is one of the most influential case studies in 20th-century social science. It helped launch the theory of cognitive dissonance, shaped popular understandings of how belief survives disconfirmation, and became a touchstone for explaining the origins of religious movements—including Christianity. But the case was misrepresented. The cult did not persist, proselytize, or reinterpret its failure as a spiritual triumph. Its leader recanted, the group disbanded, and belief dissolved. This article shows that the authors of When Prophecy Fails misled their readers—and that scholars in psychology, sociology, and religious studies have been building theories atop a collapsed foundation.
ABSTRACT
In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. When neither arrived, she recanted, her group dissolved, and efforts to proselytize ceased. But When Prophecy Fails (1956), the now-canonical account of the event, claimed the opposite: that the group doubled down on its beliefs and began recruiting—evidence, the authors argued, of a new psychological mechanism, cognitive dissonance. Drawing on newly unsealed archival material, this article demonstrates that the book’s central claims are false, and that the authors knew they were false. The documents reveal that the group actively proselytized well before the prophecy failed and quickly abandoned their beliefs afterward. They also expose serious ethical violations by the researchers, including fabricated psychic messages, covert manipulation, and interference in a child welfare investigation. One coauthor, Henry Riecken, posed as a spiritual authority and later admitted he had “precipitated” the climactic events of the study.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.
Open Research
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available in the Open Science Framework repository at https://osf.io/4jevm/. These materials include redacted digital versions of archival sources from the Michigan State University Archives, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, and the Gray Barker UFO Collection at the Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library.
References