Page 266 - The Social Animal

248 The Social Animal

small amount of money in response to his message of peace and uni-
versal brotherhood, he is able to request and receive a great deal
more. Next, he induces people to sell their homes and turn over the
money to the church. Soon, at his request, several of his followers
pull up stakes, leaving their families and friends, to start life anew in
the strange and difficult environment of Guyana. There, not only do
they work hard (thus increasing their commitment), but they also are
cut off from potential dissenting opinion, inasmuch as they are sur-
rounded by true believers. The chain of events continues. Jones takes
sexual liberties with several married women among his followers,
who acquiesce, if reluctantly; Jones claims to be the father of their
children. Finally, as a prelude to the climactic event, Jones induces
his followers to perform a series of mock ritual suicides as a test of
their loyalty and obedience.Thus, in a step-by-step fashion, the com-
mitment to Jim Jones increases. Each step in itself is not a huge, lu-
dicrous leap from the one preceding it.
Again, this is an admittedly oversimplified analysis. A great
many events occurred among Jones’s followers in addition to the
gradual increases in commitment I have described. These con-
tributed to the tragic outcome. At the same time, viewing the final
outcome in the context of increasing commitment brought about by
preceding events does shed a ray of light on a phenomenon that at
first seems impossible to understand.

Was Osama bin Laden Capitalizing on Dissonance?
Following the catastrophic destruction of the World Trade Center by
suicide bombers on September 11, 2001, a wide range of political an-
alysts have struggled to understand how hatred can be so strong that
people would destroy themselves to destroy thousands of innocent
people—when they must have known that their action could not
possibly produce any direct political advantage. Most analysts have
explained the behavior of the suicide bombers in terms of religious
fanaticism. But this explanation does not add much to our under-
standing.Thomas Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and
one of our nation’s most astute observers of the Middle East, has
taken a different approach. He has offered a partial answer to this
most difficult question using the theory of cognitive dissonance.
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Friedman suggests that there are thousands of young Muslim men