When Prophecy Fails Audiobook By Leon Festinger cover art

When Prophecy Fails

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When Prophecy Fails

By: Leon Festinger
Narrated by: Ellis Freeman
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When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World is a landmark work of social psychology by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter which was published in 1956.

The book examines the case of a UFO cult in Chicago called the Seekers, their expectation of an imminent apocalypse, and their coping mechanisms after the event did not occur. The cult had taken strong actions to demonstrate their commitment to the belief, quitting their jobs, leaving their spouses, and giving away their possessions in eager anticipation of a flying saucer coming to fetch them.

Festinger built his theory of cognitive dissonance on his observations of the psychological consequences of disconfirmed expectations experienced by cult members.

Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Psychology & Interactions

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Before books are recorded, it would be really nice if the narrator would be careful about pronunciations not only of simple words like mimeograph (pronounced mim e o graf) but also place names such as Schenectady and Allegheny. There were other errors as well in pronunciation. The other thing I did not appreciate were the various voices to delineate the characters. At times, the intonation seemed very disrespectful to me, almost mocking. Neutrality might be a better position when narrating subjects of this nature.

Mispronunciations marred my enjoyment

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the book is good and fascinating. the reader though chuckles throughout and its grating. mocking almost.

good writing, bad reading

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I love the book. A really interesting story of a prophecy gone wrong.
And the authors touched on all my questions and concerns about their methodology at the end.
My only issue was the audio recording. I kept feeling like the reader was snickering at the people and ideas.
Not that the ideas weren’t pretty far out there, even for a Sci-Fi guy like myself.
But the authors didn’t belittle the subjects, so I expected the Reader to do the same.
Great book though.

Fascinating study

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Overall, this book is very interesting and well researched. Festinger, et al.'s work is cited extensively in literature on cognitive dissonance and motivated reasoning for good reason.

I feel like I'm being generous giving this narrator two stars though. The narration could have been much better. The narration was very choppy. Some of this could be because the authors were comma happy, but with so many sound bites obviously spliced together in several places, I suspect this was primarily the narrator's fault. The narrator also came off as disrespectful to the study's research subjects on more than one occasion when he was clearly stifling laughter about their belief system. There's no reason that should have been left in this sort of production.

Narration could have been better

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The narrator kept laughing at the behavior of the study subjects. I thought it was inappropriate. If you are able to read the book vs listen to this audiobook I would. For various boring reasons I can't read books right now, so I am not sorry I listened to it. The content is very valuable.

Narrator laughed!

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This is an important study that is well-written and accessible for the non-expert. But the reader could not possibly be worse. A highly annoying voice and distracting habit of pausing after every three words is a bad start. But worse is his tone. Obviously mocking and sneering, audibly suppressing a laugh at some of the deluded people discussed. It could be argued that some derision is justified, but not by the reader! He also mispronounces words: “mimeograph” is pronounced “mime graph”?? He misreads words and corrects himself rather than re-recording that segment: “leaned…um…learned.”

This performance does a grave disservice to an important piece of work, especially in the current day of QAnon. I expected much better from Audible.

HORRIBLE reader for an important book

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I was recommended this book to read but decided to listen on my work commutes. I’ll go read it instead. Listening to this narration is painful. It’s like listening to a prepubescent William Shatner read a book. Weird pauses between words are mind numbing. It seems as if he is almost laughing during parts as well. Do yourself a favor and just read it.

Great content. Terrible narration

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Content was good. Narrator and audio quality were very poor. Not worth paying for the audio version, just read the book instead.

Terrible production quality

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The narration is robotic and a difficult listen. It also sounds like words were added in after the fact. Get the other version.

Narration is terrible

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The writing itself is fascinating, important, and really grabs your attention. However, the reader is uneven, inarticulate, and usually has an audible sneer. It is the worst audiobook reading I have ever heard and I cannot believe a human editor signed off on it.

There is another version of this book, which I will have to try, but that only makes me angrier that I wasted money on this one.

PLEASE Do Not Buy!

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