Even small cults are a serious cost on the world economy, to victims, their families, employers, friends, and credit-card companies.

Cult recruiting methods based on dosing victims with the brain chemicals released during capture bonding would make cults even more of a problem than they are now.

Lie detection is like language; there is a learning window. Telling whoppers to small children seems to be a family tradition in many families.

I suspect that a substantial fraction of human problems in the world today, not just cults, result from the mismatch between the current environment and the environment in which we evolved.

Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses.

People can undergo a sudden change of thinking and loyalties under threat of death or intense social pressure and isolation from friends and family.