Wikipedia: Psychological impact of failed predictions
Social scientists have found that while some group members will leave after the date for a doomsday prediction by the leader has passed uneventfully, others actually feel their belief and commitment to the group strengthened. Often when a group's doomsday prophesies or predictions fail to come true, the group leader will simply set a new date for impending doom, or predict a different type of catastrophe on a different date. Niederhoffer and Kenner attribute this motivation of the charismatic leader to maintain a consistent belief structure as due to a desire to save sunk cost: "When you have gone far out on a limb and so many people have followed you, and there is much "sunk cost," as economists would say, it is difficult to admit you have been wrong."
And:
Wikipedia on: When Prophecy Fails
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Premise of study
Festinger and his colleagues saw this as a case that would lead to the arousal of dissonance when the prophecy failed. Altering the belief would be difficult, as Keech and her group were committed at considerable expense to maintain it. Another option would be to enlist social support for their belief. As Festinger wrote, "If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must after all be correct.
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Conditions
Festinger stated that five conditions must be present if someone is to become a more fervent believer after a failure or disconfirmation:
- A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he behaves.
- The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.
- The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
- Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
- The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.
It seems the man-made apocalypse named "Sandy" has – considering the hype – passed rather uneventful in the US (unless of cause if you live on Cuba or some place else in the Caribbean, in which case the US Media or "Climate Progressives" do not give a fuck about your loss of life).
It'll be interesting to see whether the apocalypse will postponed – as in: "You were lucky this time, BUT THE NEXT MAN-MADE FRANKENSTORM WILL GET YOU FOR SURE!!11!!1!ONE!!ELEVEN!".
Or maybe the results of Sandy will be simply spruced up and fluffed up as much as possible.
[Update] OK, I'll admit it, I was wrong, I underestimated the initial reports from this storm. Yes, it was an unusually large storm, and yes it hit the USA hard. But a single freak storm does not make global warming,
as neither does a single snow disaster make global cooling. And it was a single freak storm, because if you look at the past years and storms making land-fall in the US (yes, please look up the past huricane seasons
here and
here), only Katrina stands out, and only because the levies (protecting low laying lands) built by the US corps of engineers were shite and broke – with properly maintained levies, Katrina would have been forgotten now.
