UnSpun
Phylicia Hancle
AP English unSpun Finding Facts in a World of Disinformtion
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions you sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
-Leon Festinger, et al., When Prophecy Fails (1956)
Have you ever wondered why other people are so unreasonable and hard to convince? Why is it that they disregard hard facts that prove you’re right and they’re worng? The fact is, we humans aren’t wired to think very rationally. That’s been confirmed recently by brain scans, but out irrational reaction to hard evidence has been the subject of scholarly study for some time. Consider one of the most famous scientific observations in all of psychology, the story of a UFO cult that was infiltrated by the social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues half a century ago. They observed a small group of true believers whose leader was a woman the authors called Marian Keech, in a place they called Lake City. Mrs. Keech said she had received messages from beings called Guardians on Planet Clarion saying that North America would be destroyed by a flood, but that her followers would be taken to safety on a UFO a few hours earlier, at midnight on December 21, 1954. Members of her cult quit jobs, sold possessions, dropped out of school, and prepared for the space journey by removing metal objects from their clothing as instructed by Mrs. Keech. They gathered in her living room on the appointed night and waited. Midnight came and went, and of course neither the flood nor the promised spacecraft arrived. But did the faithful look at this incontrovertible evidence conclude, “Oh, well, we were wrong?” Not a chance. At 4:45 A.M., as morning approached , Mrs. Keech told them that she had received another message, the cataclysm had been of because of the believers’ devotion. “Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth”, she said, “has
AP English unSpun Finding Facts in a World of Disinformtion
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions you sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
-Leon Festinger, et al., When Prophecy Fails (1956)
Have you ever wondered why other people are so unreasonable and hard to convince? Why is it that they disregard hard facts that prove you’re right and they’re worng? The fact is, we humans aren’t wired to think very rationally. That’s been confirmed recently by brain scans, but out irrational reaction to hard evidence has been the subject of scholarly study for some time. Consider one of the most famous scientific observations in all of psychology, the story of a UFO cult that was infiltrated by the social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues half a century ago. They observed a small group of true believers whose leader was a woman the authors called Marian Keech, in a place they called Lake City. Mrs. Keech said she had received messages from beings called Guardians on Planet Clarion saying that North America would be destroyed by a flood, but that her followers would be taken to safety on a UFO a few hours earlier, at midnight on December 21, 1954. Members of her cult quit jobs, sold possessions, dropped out of school, and prepared for the space journey by removing metal objects from their clothing as instructed by Mrs. Keech. They gathered in her living room on the appointed night and waited. Midnight came and went, and of course neither the flood nor the promised spacecraft arrived. But did the faithful look at this incontrovertible evidence conclude, “Oh, well, we were wrong?” Not a chance. At 4:45 A.M., as morning approached , Mrs. Keech told them that she had received another message, the cataclysm had been of because of the believers’ devotion. “Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth”, she said, “has