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In 1954, a woman from Chicago named Marian Keech claimed to receive messages from extraterrestrial beings warning her of something terrible…
The world would end in a flood on December 21 of that year.
A small group of followers, “The Seekers,” abandoned everything. They left their jobs, gave away their possessions, and said goodbye to their families to follow Marian Keech. They bet their entire lives on the prophecy coming true. In the middle of this collective madness, three psychologists infiltrated the group: Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. They knew they couldn’t save them from the madness, so their goal was to observe closely what would happen when the world, obviously, didn’t end.
And December 21 arrived.
And nothing happened.
The planet kept spinning with its usual horrible indifference and, to no one’s surprise except theirs, there was no flood. Anyone would say that was the moment the group dissolved in shame and was forced to admit they had been wrong.
The exact opposite happened.
Hours after the failure, Marian Keech announced a new message: her faith had been so powerful that God had decided to forgive the Earth. The group united even more. They began seeking new members and journalists to announce the miracle. They needed more people to believe, because the more people who confirmed their story, the less painful it would be to face the crushing, painful reality.
Leon Festinger, one of the infiltrated psychologists, called it cognitive dissonance.
Festinger saw that the human mind doesn’t want to know the truth, it only wants to protect its story. If reality attacks that story, the mind defends itself with even more conviction, even if it’s false. It wants to keep its story no matter what.
And this doesn’t happen only to “crazy people,” it happens to all of us, even if you don’t realize it.
In this analysis I’ll show you how this affects people and companies, causing catastrophic errors simply from the blindness of not wanting to change and admit they were wrong. And, above all, you’ll see what science says about how to change the mind of those people who refuse everything.
Let’s go point by point…
The problem with these people was consistency. They had an avalanche of data against them, but after selling all their possessions and abandoning their families, how could they admit they were wrong?
There was no turning back.
Once you take a direction, the brain wants to maintain consistency. Think of those brilliant people who defend absurd ideas tooth and nail. The human brain constantly generates a model of what it expects to find, and then compares that model with what it sees. We don’t see the world neutrally.
When there’s a match, everything flows normally.
When there’s a prediction error that’s too large, activation is generated in the anterior cingulate cortex, the region of the brain that processes conflict and expectations (Ide et al., 2013). It feels similar to being hurt.
That’s why arguments don’t change anyone.
You won’t get someone out of a cult by proving them wrong.
You won’t change a person’s religion or ideology with data.
You won’t convince anyone of anything if that idea is part of their identity.
The more time, energy, and life someone invested in a belief, the harder it is for them to abandon it. The brain will never want to break consistency by force.
Collapses are invisible while they happen, but obvious afterward.
Nobody sees an empire fall in real time. Nobody woke up one day in ancient Rome saying “we’re finished.” These things are only seen in hindsight. The empire decomposed over generations, until one day what the empire had been centuries before and what it was that day had nothing in common.
“Isn’t it curious how day by day it seems like nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?” — C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian.
Progressiveness is the crux of the matter.
The same thing happens in your life.
Nobody gains 20 kg overnight, they gain a hundred grams a week for months, and each week, compared to the previous one, seems like nothing, until everything has changed. Nobody drifts away from a close friend all at once: they just start responding a little later, cancel one plan, then another, until one day they realize they never see each other anymore. You slowly become someone different, and since each day is only compared to the previous one, you never feel the accumulated weight of the change.
It applies to the good and to the bad.
It applies to whoever wastes all their money.
to whoever doesn’t quit a bad habit.
to whoever stays up too late.
to whoever slacks off.
to whoever smokes.
Nobody leaves an identity in one leap, because a leap is exactly what triggers dissonance and all this resistance, but you can take a step so small it barely brushes their current identity... that one they can take.
And then another.
And then another.
Now that we’ve seen why people don’t change and that the key is to go little by little. Apply it like this.
Prioritize the relationship before the argument: The same argument is more persuasive if you’re a close person (Hovland, et al., 1953). They’ll be willing to listen to you if you gradually start to strengthen your relationship with the person.
Reduce the context: When a group discusses an opinion, the group’s average position shifts toward a more extreme version of what they already thought (Myers & Lamm, 1976). You see it over and over in debates between politicians: they criticize each other while their allies applaud, and each one leaves more convinced than they came in. Choose a moment without pressure, private, close, alone. There, no group will polarize it.
Be progressive: Ideas have a spectrum called the Overton Window. If you’re at point 10 and the other person is at point 1, your view will seem extremist to them. Instead, take them to point 2, then to point 3, and so on up to 10. Make the change so smooth that they feel they did the reasoning themselves and you didn’t even convince them.
Feed good ideas, don’t fight bad ideas: Every time you criticize their idea, you remind them of it and they’ll defend it. Instead, tell them the idea you want and ignore what you want them to forget. Over time, if your idea abounds in their head while the other goes unrepeated, the balance tips on its own.
You won’t convince with arguments, you need persuasion to get them to lower their guard.
“As we age and brain plasticity decreases, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to change in response to the world... we tend to ignore, forget, or discredit information that doesn’t fit our beliefs.” — Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself
Data doesn’t change opinions. Remember that.
— Álvaro
The mania of labeling people: The Robber’s Cave experiment and the lessons on human behavior
Why do we label people? “Us” Against “Them”: Social Identity Theory
How to discuss any topic without shouting or wanting to kill anyone: The Rapoport Protocol
P.S. I also offer 1:1 consulting to help you grow on Substack.
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If you’re interested, email me at: jardinmental@proton.me
Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. Cuando las profecías fallan.
Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelley, H. H. (1953). Communication and persuasion: Psychological studies of opinion change. Yale University Press.
Ide, J. S., Shenoy, P., Yu, A. J., & Li, C. R. (2013). Bayesian Prediction and Evaluation in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. Journal Of Neuroscience, 33(5), 2039-2047. URL
Myers, D. G., & Lamm, H. (1976). The group polarization phenomenon. Psychological Bulletin, 83(4), 602-627. URL
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