INTRODUCTION: Everybody “knows” what happened in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. At the behest of their charismatic leader, all the members of the Peoples Temple religious cult—the residents of Jonestown—“lined up in a pavilion in front of a vat containing a mixture of Kool-Aid and cyanide” and “drank willingly of the deadly solution” (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2005, pp.4-5). That citation is taken from a popular Social Psychology textbook, and is a resounding demonstration of the phenomenon that this paper will attempt to explore: you see, the authors of that textbook are so secure in their conception of the events surrounding the deaths in Jonestown that they feel no need to provide a reference for it. It is entered into the student consciousness as common knowledge. The fact that the popularly-accepted truth that Aronson, et al are parroting in this example is plainly false is almost beside the point, although this paper will provide a brief examination of some of the evidence which contradicts that accepted truth. The problem is much broader than the debunking of a single myth, and demands that some very important and difficult questions receive systematic evaluation: how is it that entire populations “know” things that contradict all available evidence, and what can be done to mediate this effect?

PDF: Jonestown: The Social Psychology of Official Stories and Accepted Truths.