Michael Sylvester wrote:
>
> There seems to be a parallel between those people who are expecting some
> disaster at midnite on New Year's eve 1999 and the the doomsday sect that
> Leon Festinger wrote about in When prophecy fails.
> Some people are currently amassing all types of food supplies amd other
> gadgets to manage the effects of the Y2K bug.
> What if their purportedly premonitions of disaster do not happen?
> Could this lead to a state of cognitive dissonance?
> And how will they reduce the dissonance if the Y2K predictions fail?
The difference (as I see it) is that Festinger studied people who believed
something that had no basis in reality. The earth did not end, no space
visitors came. There really is a Y2K problem in that computer code must be
rewritten for alot of government and utility computers. If not rewritten, they
will fail (that's my understanding). If credit cards and ATMs work smoothing
on January 1, most people will (correctly) claim that code on the relevant
computers has either been changed, or, did not need to be changed. So I don't
think the Festinger parallel is valid.
But, we may have a large-scale naturalistic study of hoarding behavior.
Expect a small run on ATM machines as people stock up on cash. Expect
increased sales at Home Depot, on canned goods, bottled water, and those red
plastic gasoline cans (be sure to invest in all these companies).
Hoarding behavior may not be illogical. Stores may run out of certain items.
You may have a hard time finding AA batteries to power Christmas presents. To
the extent you cannot trust other people not to hoard, it's in your best
interest to stock up before everyone else does (shades of the "Prisoner's
dilemma"). As a concrete example, I had been thinking of buying a generator
for years because we live in the country and we lose everything in ice storms
(like last year). I bought one before Y2K because I knew prices would rise as
we got closer. When I bought one last month prices were already rising.
Also, decisions are made both on the _probability_ of events happening as
well as the _consequence_ of events. I carry earthquake insurance not because
of the (nonzero) probability of such an event, but because of the consequence
if one were to strike. I'd be stupid to predict an earthquake in central NH.
But I carry the insurance anyway, and I convince myself it's a logical
decision.
--
* John W. Kulig, Department of Psychology ************************
* Plymouth State College Plymouth NH 03264 *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://oz.plymouth.edu/~kulig *
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* "Eat bread and salt and speak the truth" Russian proverb *
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