Chapter 5: Quieting the Mind
Summary
This chapter talks about Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. Slater describes in this chapter a group of people that started believing that a flood was coming on midnight December 21. The only way to survive this was by believing in a "god" named Sananda. This caught the attention of the media, and on midnight of December 21, several media channels were waiting outside of the cult's meeting location. Nothing happened at midnight and the cult started to proselytize. Festinger infiltrated the cult and proved his work, cognitive dissonance.
Discussion
Out of all the chapters that I have read so far, this definitely was the worst one. At the beginning of the chapter the idea of cognitive dissonance is described briefly. As the chapter continues, Slater describes two incident: the cult that believed in Sananda and the flooding, and the story of Linda Santo. The two stories sort of describe that extreme cases of Festinger's theory.
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