Reddit reviews When Prophecy Fails

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment
that's unfortunate, your friend seems like he has a lot of raw intelligence but just happen to be brought up in a family I'm guessing? just a demonstration of how powerful initial imprints are of our belief systems.

http://www.amazon.com/When-Prophecy-Fails-Leon-Festinger/dp/1891396986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373595712&sr=8-1&keywords=when+prophecy+fails

check out this book. SDA is really a religious manifestation of this social phenomena explained in the book.

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy Wilson is personally one of my favorites
Anything by Malcolm Gladwell (I really enjoyed Blink)
Anything by Robert Cialdini (He was my social psychology professor and one of my favorite authors / public speakers)
Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) by Claude M. Steele (Who basically uncovered stereotype threat research)
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Phillip Zimbaro (famous for the Stanford prison experiment)


Older books:
Mindfulness by Ellen Langer (about automatic processes and how mindless we can be)
When Prophecy Fails by Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter (To understand how cults work, a group of researchers infiltrate a join a cult. Mainly about cognitive dissonance but details what happens to a cult when the world doesn't end like predicted)
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram if you want to know all about the Milgram experiments

Sorry that is all that comes to mind now. . . (edited for formatting)