Then came the pivot. At 4:45 a.m., Martin claimed to receive a new message: the group had spread so much light that God had decided to save the world from the flood.
To prove this wasn't just about cults, Festinger and James Carlsmith conducted a now-famous experiment. They asked students to perform a mind-numbingly boring task: turning wooden pegs on a board for an hour. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
Afterward, the researchers paid some students $20 to lie to the next participant and say the task was "fun." They paid another group only $1 to tell the same lie. The results were counterintuitive: Cognitive Dissonance Theory: A Crash Course Then came the pivot