Author

Books by Leon Festinger

Leon Festinger (1919–1989) was an American social psychologist whose work at MIT, the University of Minnesota, and Stanford shaped modern social psychology. He is best known for two major contributions: the theory of cognitive dissonance, introduced in When Prophecy Fails and developed formally in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), and earlier work on social comparison theory, which proposed that people evaluate their own beliefs and abilities by comparing them to others. His work on dissonance became one of the most studied and replicated findings in social psychology and remains influential in behavioral economics, political science, and organizational behavior.