This program with Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University discusses Leon Festinger's 1956 "When Prophecy Fails", examines research into cognitive dissonance by such figures as Festinger and Carlsmith, Aronson and Mills, Brehm, Comer and Laird, Cooper, Lieberman, and Santos; and outlines the essential components of cognitive dissonance as defined by Joel Cooper and Russel Fazio. The program considers how cognitive dissonance motivates human behavior and shows how it applies to research in such areas as effort justification, threat and punishment, and decision making. It also introduces Daryl Bern's Social Perception theory as an alternative explanation to cognitive dissonance.