X-Message-Number: 18170
From: "Robert Moore" <>
Subject: Why do people get sucked into cults?
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 01:30:03 -0800

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If you haven't read Keith Henson's draft paper on an evolutionary psychology 
point of view on cults, you may want to ask him for a copy (email: 
).


Keith posted to Cryonet a few days talking about how evolutionary psychology can
help explain why the kidnapped Patty Hearst went so far as to help her captors.


My own family has suffered from cult involvement and I have often wondered how 
people, even educated, intelligent people get sucked into cults, seemingly 
against their own self-interest.  


Trying to understand, I recently read Steve Hassan's, "Combating Cult Mind 
Control".  In that book he cites a number of mind control techniques used by 
cults that are really quite effective.  But why do they work?  I mean, why are 
we humans susceptible to mind control techniques in the first place?


I think Keith's paper goes a long way toward answering this question by looking 
back to our tribal past when humans, our ancestors, were captured and force to 
live in a new tribe, among other things.

Robert

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