Reprint of the original 1956 edition.When Prophecy Fails waspublished by Festinger, Riecken and Schachter during the height of the Cold War. It is a detailed study of a small UFO religion group in Chicago calledthe Seekersbelieved in an imminent apocalypse. The authors focused on the members' coping mechanisms after the event did not occur, focusing on the cognitive dissonance between the members' beliefs and actual events, and the psychological consequences...