| Abstract: | Comments on the book "When Prophecy Fails," by Festinger et al (see record 2004-16485-000). In this book, the authors undertook to foretell how a certain group of people would behave under certain circumstances, and their prophecy proved to be correct. The current author discusses the case of Professor Hoyst O. Petard of the University of West Dakota, a former pupil and ardent admirer of Festinger's, who staked his professional future upon replicating the original experiment with a newly found band of religious zealots rash enough to set a date for an unlikely holocaust. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
