To stop the pain of that inconsistency, we must change something. We can: Leave the cult (the rarest path). Change the belief: "The prophecy was wrong." Add new cognitions: "We saved the world with our faith". The peg-turning experiment
To prove this wasn't just about cults, Festinger and James Carlsmith conducted a now-famous experiment. They asked students to perform a mind-numbingly boring task: turning wooden pegs on a board for an hour. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
Afterward, the researchers paid some students $20 to lie to the next participant and say the task was "fun." They paid another group only $1 to tell the same lie. The results were counterintuitive: Cognitive Dissonance Theory: A Crash Course To stop the pain of that inconsistency, we