It'll Swamp us on Dec. 21" The prophecy came from Dorothy Martin (1900–1992), a Chicago housewife who practised automatic writing, and it outlined a catastrophe predicted for a specific date in their near future.

Seeing an opportunity to test their theories with a contemporary case study, the research team infiltrated the group of Martin's followers in order to collect data before, during and after the time the prophecy would be refuted.

A recently published book, Aboard a Flying Saucer by UFO contactee Truman Bethurum, described his alleged interactions with beings from the planet Clarion.

The messages received by Martin included a prophecy that Lake City and large portions of the United States, Canada, Central America and Europe would be destroyed by a flood before dawn on December 21, 1954.

Through the restrained recruitment activities of Charles Laughead (a college doctor in Michigan) and other acquaintances, Martin was supported in her mediumship by a small group of believers.

As anticipated by the research team, the prophesied date passed with no sign of the predicted flood, causing a dissonance between the group's commitment to the prophecy and the unfolding reality.

Festinger, Riecken and Schachter used the study to test their theories on how people might be expected to behave when faced with a specific type of dissonance, arising from a failed prophecy.

In this case, if the group's leader could add consonant elements by converting others to the basic premise, then the magnitude of her dissonance following disconfirmation would be reduced.

Martin's early influences, as outlined in the study, included theosophy, Godfré Ray King, and John Ballou Newbrough, as well as a general interest in flying saucers and extraterrestrial visitors.

Following the failure of this prediction to materialise, those remaining in the group came to believe that their own activities had influenced events and that God had temporarily saved the world from destruction.

Festinger, Riecken and Schachter reported the following sequence of events: After the failure of the prediction, Martin was threatened with arrest and involuntary commitment, and left Chicago.

A second problem is that the working hypothesis of the sociologists seems to have shaped, to a high degree, their perception of the events and the account given of the group, leading to an inaccurate report.

The portrayal of the group as merely based on a prediction, however, made Festinger and his colleagues overlook other dimensions (spiritual, moral, cultural) which might be crucial for the movement (Van Fossen 1988: 195).