Disconfirmed expectancy

Disconfirmed expectancy is a psychological term for what is commonly known as a failed prophecy. According to the American social psychologist Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, disconfirmed expectancies create a state of psychological discomfort because the outcome contradicts expectancy. Upon recognizing the falsification of an expected event an individual will experience the competing cognitions, "I believe [X]," and, "I observed [Y]." The individual must either discard the now disconfirmed belief or justify why it has not actually been disconfirmed. As such, disconfirmed expectancy and the factors surrounding the individual's consequent actions have been studied in various settings.

Disconfirmed expectancy was famously illustrated in the 1956 book When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. The book gave an inside account of a doomsday cult led by Dorothy Martin (given the alias "Marion Keech" to preserve her privacy), of Chicago. Martin claimed to have received messages from aliens forecasting a flood that would end the world on December 21, 1954. Festinger and his researchers took the chance to pretend to be a part of the cult in order to observe its behaviors and reaction when the flood failed to occur. Furthermore, Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, which would be published the following year, predicted that the failure of the prophecy would not break the cult. Instead the group members would look for ways to justify their actions and maintain confidence in the cult.

Some members abandoned the group when the prophecy failed to be fulfilled, but most stayed. Those who stayed did not have weakened resolve. There was in fact an increase in their proselytization and their fervor for the new religion. The prediction of the Earth's destruction became a disconfirmed expectancy which resulted in the dissonant cognitions "the world is going to end" and "the world did not end". Those who left the cult accepted that they were wrong and discarded their false cognition. Those who stayed instead looked for ways to explain the event in a way that would maintain their beliefs. Eventually they came to the agreement that the planet was spared because of their prayers and actions. Festinger et al. theorized that five conditions must be present for this to occur; that is, there are five conditions that must be met such that a disconfirmation can lead to increased strength of belief: strong belief, commitment to the belief, the possibility that the belief is false, recognition of the disconfirmation, and strong social support (these are detailed below).

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