[With thanks to Hugh Willbourn I share more of his writing, in this instance an abridged extract from his May 5th post Covid, Brexit and Flying Saucers]
In 1954 Leon Festinger, one of the most respected social psychologists of the 20th Century, joined a cult whose members believed that earthquakes and flooding were about to hit the United States but the cult members would be saved by “the Guardians” who would whisk them to safety in flying saucers. Their leader, given the pseudonym Marion Keech by Festinger, revealed the date of salvation and they all sat and waited.
The appointed time came and passed and they were not saved. Nor did the United States suffer catastrophic earthquakes and floods. This is where it gets interesting. Before he and his colleagues had inveigled their way into the cult, Festinger had posited that after their beliefs had been incontravertibly disproven, the cult members would become not less but more convinced of their beliefs.
Festinger hypothesised that if five specific conditions were met, believers would double down on their beliefs in order to avoid what he called ‘cognitive dissonance’: a contradiction between their beliefs and the evidence of their own lives.
Festinger’s five conditions are:
1. There must be conviction
2. There must be commitment to this conviction
3. The conviction must be amenable to unequivocal disconfirmation
4. Such unequivocal disconfirmation must occur
5. Social support must be available subsequent to the disconfirmation.
Believers could also avoid cognitive dissonance by simply abandoning their beliefs and some members of the cult did that. They left and did not return.
Those who stayed had invested heavily in their beliefs. They had disposed of possessions and totally reshaped their lives. They had each other for mutual support but that wasn’t quite enough. They became compelled to convince others. Festinger published an account of his research in a book entitled, When Prophecy Fails, and even now, sixty years later, it is a good read.
Festinger’s five conditions and the behaviour of the cult believers correspond closely to the situation with Covid-19: a prophecy is made, believers invest themselves, their time, money and prestige in it, the prophecy fails and the believers become more fervent. The biggest difference is that whereas the flying saucer cult had a maximum of a few dozen believers, our response to COVID-19 has devastated the economy of the world.
The Covid-19 virus has killed thousands of people, and will certainly kill thousands more. It has not, however, killed anything like the numbers initially predicted, and so the Festinger effect starts up.
The model that lead to a change of strategy by the British Government was produced by a professor who is now famous for the inaccuracy of his previous predictions.
At the time of writing (5th May) the total death toll worldwide is just over 250,000, which is half the number that was predicted for the UK alone. To put this figure into perspective, the number of people who have died of, or with, Covid-19 in about four and half months is the same as the number who die in five days from cardiovascular disease.
The number of deaths associated with Covid-19 has risen, but thank goodness it is nowhere near the initial predictions. However the predictors, like Marion Keech, have not lost faith. We are warned that a partial release from lockdown may cause 100,000 deaths, and a premature end to lockdown will cause a second peak of infections even higher than initial predictions.
It may be claimed that the worldwide lockdown has spared us from the hideous numbers predicted, although the little research we have seems to show they have had minimal effect.
In spite of the evidence that Covid-19, whilst tragically fatal for too many, is not the decimating plague that was predicted, Governments and populations around the world continue to behave as though it is a plague on a par with the Black Death.
Sadly this reaction means that along with the many sick and older people with co-morbidities who have been taken from us, the death rate has risen amongst amongst younger health service personnel over-exposed to the virus and amongst those other people with non-Covid illnesses and conditions who have been frightened away from going to hospital.
Now Sweden is about to show us what a disastrous mistake we made to believe the dire prophecies of the doomster modellers.
Don’t expect an apology from our Government, or any other Government, any time soon. The Festinger effect is far, far more prevalent than a clear-sighted view of reality and the tragedy is all the greater.
We can’t bear to face the fact that, whether greatly feared or greatly desired, our prophecies can fail. Maybe, just maybe, we are wrong and we need to summon the clarity and courage to admit it.
Hugh Willbourn is an author, psychotherapist and qualitative researcher.