Jim Jones Why Do People Join Cults?

In 1978, about 913 psychologically normal citizens drank cyanide-adulterated punch and suicided in Guyana, South America. From those 913 members, 276 were innocent children. As informed in the Britannica Encyclopedia article “Jim Jones,” these members belonged to a cult known as the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones, who was responsible for ordering the members to suicide. According to an article “Why Do People Join Cults?” by Adrian Furnham, Ph.D., a cult is a group with “powerful and exclusive dedication and devotion to an explicit person or creed,” with a goal to “reprogramming the way people see the world” (Furnham). In summary, a cult, as explained in “Cult Influence & Persuasion Tactics” by Kelton Rhoads, Ph.D., “displaces a person's former
In the article “Why Do People Join Cults?” by Adrian Furnham, it is communicated that cults “provide clear answers to difficult and big questions: what it all means; the secret of happiness; life after death; the difference between right and wrong, who is with us and who against us” (Furnham). People by the dozens don't likes it when they find out that what they have worked on for a long time was in vain. Ergo, they want to make the right and the wrong clear from the beginning. That is the reason why the general public don't like hearing “maybe”; they want to only “yes” or “no” to separate truth from dishonesty. Many cults have answers to almost all questions, even though they can be ridiculous. In the article “Cult Dynamics” by Jan Groenveld, the author says that “the assumption here is not so much that man can be God, but rather that man's ideas can be God” (Groeveld). This idea comforts hoards of people and establishes their self confidence. It makes them feel as if anything is possible and that their are no limits to