An article titled How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail republished in Scientific American provided an interesting case study that mirrors the behaviour of the Yellowtards and communists today in the way they defend their failed ideologies…
In the classic 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, psychologist Leon Festinger and his co-authors described what happened to a UFO cult when the mother ship failed to arrive at the appointed time. Instead of admitting error, “members of the group sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs,” and they made “a series of desperate attempts to erase their rankling dissonance by making prediction after prediction in the hope that one would come true.” Festinger called this cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously.
It is easy to see the parallels — how the Yellowtards and communists stick to obsolete slogans and indefensible positions to continue their rabid quest for relevance they had irrevocably lost a long time ago.
[Credit to @MsLeaSalonga for sharing the article on Twitter.]
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