ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the story about a suburban housewife called Mrs. Dorothy Martin who had received messages that the end of the world was going to happen on 21 December. Furthermore, Martin had attracted a number of followers called the Seekers who believed in her prophecy. The newspaper reported that Mrs Martin claimed that she had been sent the messages by superior beings from a planet called 'Clarion'. On reading the article, Leon Festinger and his fellow psychologists Henry Rieken and Stanley Schachter thought this was too good an opportunity to miss. They decided that they would infiltrate the Seekers in order to study them and observe how they would react when the prophecy inevitably proved incorrect. The major problem with all the doomsday prophecy groups is the lack of information that psychologists can find out about them and their beliefs and actions. Cognitive dissonance theory explains why people become motivated to change their attitudes.
