Festinger's seminal 1957 work integrated existing research literature on influence and social communication under his theory of cognitive dissonance. The theory was motivated by a study of rumors immediately following a severe earthquake in India in 1934. Among people who felt the shock but sustained no damage from the earthquake, rumors were widely circulated and accepted about even worse disasters to come. Although seemingly counter-intuitive that people would choose to believe "fear-provoking" rumors, Festinger reasoned that these rumors were actually "fear-justifying." The rumors functioned to reduce the inconsistency of people's feelings of fear despite not directly experiencing the effects of the earthquake by giving people a reason to be fearful.