Cults are coming. Are they crazy or bearing critical messages?
This article was written by Dr. Philip Zimbardo, a renowned social psychologist at Stanford University who is currently a candidate for the presidency of the American Psychological Association. The article applies Dr. Zimbardo’s understanding of social influence processes to the question of cults. He says, for example: “Whatever any member of a cult has done, you and I could be recruited or seduced into doing–under the right or wrong conditions. The majority of ‘normal, average, intelligent’ individuals can be led to engage in immoral, illegal, irrational, aggressive and self destructive actions that are contrary to their values or personality–when manipulated situational conditions exert their power over individual dispositions.
