X-Message-Number: 18170 From: "Robert Moore" <> Subject: Why do people get sucked into cults? Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 01:30:03 -0800 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0096_01C1869A.5A013A40 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" 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 ------=_NextPart_000_0096_01C1869A.5A013A40 Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18170