result in the Milgram experiment and the extreme success of some cults that have

stumbled through practice evolution into bringing pressure from many

psychological tendencies to bear at the same time on conversion targets. The

targets vary in susceptibility, like the dogs Pavlov worked with in his old age,

but some of the minds that are targeted simply snap into zombiedom under cult

pressure. Indeed, that is one cult’s name for the conversion phenomenon:

snapping.

 

What are we to make of the extreme ignorance of the psychology textbook writers

of yesteryear? How could anyone who had taken a freshman course in physics or

chemistry not be driven to consider, above all, how psychological tendencies

combine and with what effects? Why would anyone think his study of psychology

was adequate without his having endured the complexity involved in dealing with

intertwined psychological tendencies? What could be more ironic than professors

using oversimplified notions while studying bad cognitive effects grounded in

the mind’s tendency to use oversimplified algorithms?

 

I will make a few tentative suggestions. Maybe many of the long-dead professors

wanted to create a whole science from one narrow type of repeat- able psychology

experiment that was conductible in a university setting and that aimed at one

psychological tendency at a time. If so, these early psychology professors made

a massive error in so restricting their approach to their subject. It would be

like physics ignoring (1) astrophysics because it couldn’t happen in a physics

lab, plus (2) all compound effects. What psychological tendencies could account

for early psychology professors adopting an over-restricted approach to their