IELTS

 READING PASSAGE 1  Cognitive Dissonance  A. Charles Darwin said, “This not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” So, you’ve sold your home, quit your job, shunned your colleagues, abandoned your friends and family. The end of the world is nigh, and you ‘know for a fact’ that you are one of the chosen few who will be swept up from the ‘great flood’ approaching on 21st December at midnight to be flown to safety on a far-off planet. And then midnight on 21st December comes around and there is no flood. No end of the world. No flying saucer to the rescue. What do you do? Admit you were wrong? Acknowledge that you gave up position, money, friends – for nothing? Tell yourself and others you have been a schmuck? Not on your life.  B. Social psychologist Leon Festinger infiltrated a flying saucer doomsday cult in the late 1950s. The members of this cult had given up everything on the premise that the wor...