From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Tue 24 Dec 2002 - 00:56:02 GMT
(Re life threatening cult memes)
Why are (at least some) humans highly susceptible?
To answer this question I must digress far into evolutionary
psychology. Evolutionary psychology (EP) grew out of the same background
as sociobiology. EP is based on the simple concept that our minds have
been shaped no less than our bodies by evolution. Because evolution acts
slowly, our psychological characteristics today are those that promoted
reproductive success in the ancestral environment, i.e., our race's
millions of years of living as social primates in tribes and small
villages. EP asserts that our psychological traits are the constructs of
genes that were selected in the ancestral environment.
"The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and
understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an
approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary
biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It
is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behaviour. It is
a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.
In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that
were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our
hunter-gatherer ancestors. This way of thinking about the brain, mind, and
behaviour is changing how scientists approach old topics, and opening up
new ones. This chapter is a primer on the concepts and arguments that
animate it. " Leda Cosmides & John Tooby
(See http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html for more on
evolutionary psychology.)
There has not been enough time for human genes to adapt to the changes in
the environment in the last few thousand years. In fact, most humans lived
in tribes or small villages until relatively recent generations. I suspect
that a substantial fraction of human problems in the world today, not just
cults, result from the mismatch between the current--highly
artificial--environment and the environment in which we evolved. (Mismatch
and all, I much prefer the modern world.)
In the Western culture block the tribal environment is largely
gone--our success has greatly modified the world. We have to use the few
remaining hunter-gatherer groups and our nearest relatives to give us a
view into the past. While there was plenty of variation in what people did
for a living, (depending on local resources) the picture that emerges for
humans in the previous several million years is that of a social primate
living in small bands and villages.
There may be other factors, but I see at least two major evolved
psychological mechanisms emerging from the past to make us susceptible to
cults. The Patty Hearst kidnapping exemplifies one. We know that people
can undergo a sudden change of thinking and loyalties under threat of death
or intense social pressure and isolation from friends and family. Usually
called "brainwashing," it is also known as The Stockholm Syndrome and "mind
control."
An evolutionary psychology explanation starts by asking why such a trait
would have improved the reproductive success of people during the millions
of years we lived as social primates in bands or tribes? One thing that
stands out from our records of the historical North American tribes, the
South American tribes such as the Yanamano, and some African tribes is that
being captured was a relatively common event. If you go back a few
generations, almost everyone in some of these tribes has at least one
ancestor (usually a women) who was violently captured from another tribe.
Natural selection has left us with psychological responses to capture seen
in the Stockholm Syndrome and the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Capture-bonding
or social reorientation when captured from one warring tribe to another was
an essential survival tool for a million years or more. Those who
reoriented often became our ancestors. Those who did not became breakfast.
Tribal life was not very many generations in the past even for
western people. Recent genetic studies in Iceland have found that many of
the women who were the founding stock of Iceland came from England and what
is now France. Some of them might have been willing brides, but some were
probably captured and carried off in Viking raids only 40 generations ago.
Fighting hard to protect yourself and your relatives is good for
your genes, but when captured and escape is not possible, giving up short
of dying and making the best you can of the new situation is also good for
your genes. In particular it would be good for genes that built minds able
to dump previous emotional attachments under conditions of being captured
and build new social bonds to the people who have captured you. The
process should neither be too fast (because you may be rescued) nor too
slow (because you don't want to excessively try the patience of those who
have captured you--see end note 3).
An EP explanation stresses the fact that we have lots of ancestors
who gave up and joined the tribe that had captured them (and sometimes had
killed most of their relatives). This selection of our ancestors accounts
for the extreme forms of capture-bonding exemplified by Patty Hearst and
the Stockholm Syndrome. Once you realize that humans have this trait, it
accounts for the "why" behind everything from basic military training and
sex "bondage" to fraternity hazing (people may have a wired-in "knowledge"
of how to induce bonding in captives). It accounts for battered wife
syndrome, where beatings and abuse are observed to strengthen the bond
between the victim and the abuser--at least up to a point.
This explanation for brainwashing/Stockholm Syndrome is an example
of the power of EP to suggest plausible and sometimes testable reasons for
otherwise hard-to-fathom human psychological traits. Some cults use abuse
and confinement to induce capture-bonding, especially for those who try to
escape. Others, particularly the Moonies, used fear as an element to get
prospective members to bond. (In the 70s, those who went with them for a
weekend found themselves 30 miles from the nearest town.) Historically
capture-bonding was important in the spread of some religions. (Convert or
die, infidel!)
Capture-bonding does not by itself account for the influence cults have on
their victims, though it does account for the success of classic
"deprogramming" cult members by capture. To account for the success of
most cults we need to look at another powerful psychological reward mechanism.
(to be continued)
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