When the Bombs Drop: Reactions to Disconfirmed Prophecy in a Millennial Sect

This article reports the results of an ethnographic study of a millennial Baha'i sect whose leader predicted that the world would be devastated by nuclear war on April 29, 1980. Shortly before that date we began a participant-observer study of the sect, and during the following eight months we supplemented our observations by interviewing members and defectors in the four states where the group's leader had a substantial following. The purpose of the investigation was to replicate the classic study of disconfirmed prophecy reported in "When Prophecy Fails" by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter. They found that prophetic disconfirmation was followed by an increase in conviction and heightened efforts to recruit new believers. We report contrary findings and explore social psychological factors that might account for the difference between our findings and the results of the Festinger et al. study. We argue that reactions to prophetic failure are shaped less by psychological forces than by social circumstances existing at the time of disconfirmation.