SOP 3004 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: When Prophecy Fails, Doomsday Cult, Participant Observation
13 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
Naturalistic observation- go to natural environment of subject. Restaurants saying 45 minutes for wait, in reality it may be shorter but your lowering expectations. Most hostesses in study overestimated time needed to wait but actually sat them down sooner. Participant observation: become part of the group you are observing. _ festinger and associates learned of doomsday cult in chicago, believe world will end in december 21st. In cult: woman receiving messages from out of space, would go into trance and begin writing. Messages , says world will be consumed by floods on december 21st says spaceships will arrive to take cult away. On day of end of the world, people furtively sitting on the ground waiting. 3:00am marian keach gets another message, saying that the aliens, had spared the. Earth because of the group; said they must no go out to tell everyone what they did. Shows how people deal with expectations not being met, and how participant observation works.
