Cargo Cults Are Everywhere: The Hidden Rituals That Shape Our World

Society is full cargo cults driven by mimicry and immitation rather than true understanding. We should know better.

In the midst of the Pacific battles of World War II, a group of small Melanesian islands in the Southwest Pacific became the staging ground for a peculiar phenomenon. With both American and Japanese forces occupying the islands, the native islanders - once living in relative isolation - were suddenly thrust into a world filled with foreign soldiers, roaring planes, and mysterious "cargo" that descended out of the heavens. As the war came to a close and the soldiers retreated with all their gear, the islanders were left wanting more of this strange but useful cargo. In the hope that the sky would once again rain down its bounty upon the tropical beaches, they started mimicking the rituals they had observed the foreign soldiers doing.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the military personnel use. Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles. The islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.

- From Wikipedia

Naturally, the islanders had no clue about the intricate logistics or geopolitical context that brought the soldiers and their cargo there in the first place. Instead, many islanders—often led by charismatic self-styled prophets—presumably believed these riches were gifts from ancestral spirits or powerful deities, now accessible through the foreigners.

So, in the hopes of receiving more bounty, the islanders meticulously replicated what they had seen, hoping to summon the cargo back to their shores¹. Little did they know that they had become perhaps the most prominent example of what we now call a "cargo cult," a term that encapsulates the human tendency to confuse form with function, ritual with reason, and most importantly, correlation with causation.

In this article, I’ll look into the various ways that cargo cults and cargo cult-like behavior manifests in modern society.

Let me also state upfront that I'm by no means trying to denigrate or ridicule the indigenous islanders because of their "silly" behaviors. Instead, cargo cults are a vivid expression of a very common human tendency. The cargo cult's rituals are so obviously ineffective from our modern vantage point, given our knowledge of history, engineering, and logistics, that it serves as an example and a warning to all of us. 

The Psychology of Cargo Cults

While there are always specific cultural or individual factors at play in any given story, at a high level, our brains are just wired for pattern recognition - we are pattern-seeking animals. Although this is a great strength in most circumstances, it also leads us to make false correlations. We observe something happening and often conclude something must have made it happen, something else that easily comes to mind. When applied to complex systems like our world, this cognitive shortcut often results in cargo cult-like behavior, as individuals associate visible actions with the observed outcomes, neglecting to consider the underlying causal mechanisms.

More specifically, I think there are a few key biases at play that make us susceptible to cargo cult thinking. Namely, confirmation bias, the availability heuristic, and survivorship bias. Confirmation bias makes us favor explanations that strengthen and confirm our existing beliefs, while the availability heuristic makes us consider only the explanations that come readily to mind - neglecting a whole host of other possible causes. Survivorship bias - the tendency to focus on the successful outcomes while overlooking the failures - leads us to look at 'successful' individuals, companies, or policies and mimic the visible behaviors or strategies. Of course, this makes us neglect all the countless others who may have done the exact same things but failed and blinds us to the underlying causes that contributed to both the success and failures of others.

Cargo Cults are all Around

The hallmark of a true cargo cult is when we blindly follow rituals and put on performative appearances we believe are effective but that, in reality, are just a form of theater: people do things they have seen others doing and misunderstand the underlying causal mechanisms. To the extent that the ritualistic behavior produces the desired results, it is purely by chance.

The Melanesian islanders might not have suffered any grave harm by adopting all those cargo cult rituals, but they suffered a real opportunity cost. A proper understanding of the context and reasons for the appearance and disappearance of the cargo would have been likely to promote faster economic development and welfare. Nevertheless, the islanders are not an exception but rather a case in point; there are plenty of examples of cargo cults in society.

Entrepreneurship & Business

One need not look very far to find modern cargo cults; startups often mimic the superficial traits of successful companies, overlooking the unique market dynamics that contributed to their success. Copying or adopting ideas without examining them on their own merit is a large part of what drives hype cycles in tech and business (look no further than that Crypto craze of recent times). Truthfully, this kind of mimicry is not limited to entrepreneurs but is widespread across the corporate world more broadly and can be seen in everything from business strategy to organizational design. 

Consider the amount of meetings and internal processes you're a part of on a weekly basis. What percent of this time is really productive and contributes to the stated goals? It wouldn't surprise me if the vast majority of people-centric activities within most corporations are just forms of cargo cults rather than result-oriented behaviors.  Especially as organizations grow and processes are inherited by other people and teams, their original purpose is lost or fades, but the rituals remain: 

• Meetings become a default setting in many organizations, especially large ones. People schedule them because that's what you do, not because they're the most efficient way to disseminate information or make decisions. Recurring meetings, in particular, can take on a life of their own.

• Anyone who has worked in IT has likely seen or experienced companies or teams adopting Agile methodologies without understanding or implementing the underlying principles. They do all the rituals and adopt all the tools; they call themselves Agile, have Scrum Masters, daily standups, and do sprint planning. But they don't (necessarily) succeed in empowering developers, talking to customers, or shipping valuable software early and often.

• While the intent is to assess and improve performance, Performance Review processes often devolve into a bureaucratic exercise that neither party finds particularly useful. Yet, the ritual persists, often because "that's how it's always been done" or because it gives the illusion of accuracy.

• Ping-pong tables and a whole host of other employee benefits, like lunches and free sodas, are adopted by well-meaning companies because they see other successful tech companies offering those perks. Yet they fail to take a deeper look at what's actually going to improve their company culture or employee satisfaction.

• Similar to other cultural artifacts or behaviors, team-building activities like trust falls, trips, or escape rooms are often conducted because they're what "good companies do," not because they necessarily improve team cohesion or performance in the long run. Nonetheless, these practices are copied from one company to another.

Much has been said about this and similar topics, so I don't need to dwell on it, except to say that just adopting the surface-level rituals will not transform the business unless you also understand and implement the underlying principles.

Nutrition & Fitness

Few activities are as rife with cargo cults as dieting and fitness. As someone who has spent more than a decade frequenting various gyms and following all kinds of fitness and dieting trends, I have a proverbial database of anecdotes and personal experience of cargo culting.

In the gym, it's very common, if not a best practice, to basically copy what the biggest and buffest guy is doing without much afterthought. After all, why wouldn't copying the most muscular guy in the gym work? Sometimes, these people will also make scientific-sounding claims about things like how many reps you should do per set or how quickly after a workout you need to consume protein. When such claims are made with scientific jargon but without a proper understanding of the underlying science, it has come to be referred to as "bro-science" and is really a form of cargo culting. Even well-informed and well-intentioned people (myself included) will make scientifically sounding arguments and use technical jargon that adds a veneer of legitimacy. But all too often, they are just copying what others have said or done and don't really know how things work or why.

Cargo cults are easy to spot when you know how something really works, but one reason this kind of mimicry is so prevalent in the gym is that it often works! Training like the big guys in the gym will work pretty well for some people some of the time. Fitness trends have a strong survivorship bias where the successful live to tell the tale of their success, but we never hear from all the countless failures that tried the same methods. Whether they've been successful or not, merely copying what others have done hasn't improved their understanding of what works or why.

The same goes for fad diets. Many new diet and wellness trends and the people promoting them usually use scientific-sounding language and have plenty of anecdotes of the success of their favored approach. But again, this is mostly just copying the outwardly facing behaviors without understanding why it has worked (or hasn't). In the case of diets, true understanding would mean that you understand the first principle of weight loss, which is about energy balance. And if you do understand that, then more or less any approach that modulates your energy balance will be successful - which is why so many diets work.

Economics & Politics

Even the practice of economics, presumably a science, isn't safe from falling into the cargo cult trap. Politicians and policy-makers often attempt to imitate successful economic policies from other nations without a complete understanding of the contextual factors that were key to their success. 

Take austerity measures, for example. After the 2008 financial crisis, several European countries adopted strict austerity policies inspired by examples where fiscal tightening seemed to have worked. However, these policies often failed to consider the unique economic, social, and political landscapes of each country. In Greece, austerity measures led to widespread protests, economic contraction, and increased poverty rather than the intended economic stabilization. (When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail...)

In this way, the copying of successful economic practices without a thorough understanding of the causal factors is a form of cargo cult behavior, which leads to unintended and often negative consequences.

Politics, in particular, is strongly guided by traditions and policies that tend to devolve into a kind of cargo cult. Consider how often democratic reforms fail when implemented in illiberal or quasi-authoritarian countries. They adopt parliamentary democratic governance and hold elections but often fail to deliver true change. Sham elections look a lot like real elections, except that the results are faked or disregarded. Some countries even have the word "democratic" in their names, and those are often the least democratic of all. In such systems, politicians and people "do all the things" that others do in democratic countries, but they fail to become stable and prosperous democracies because the circumstances are fundamentally different. 

Even real elections can devolve into a form of a cargo cult-like tradition; the act of casting a ballot and voting for a party/candidate is only a very small part of what makes a country truly democratic. A populous that is easily swayed by populistic and charismatic political leaders or just votes according to their familial tradition does not necessarily lead to a well-informed electorate participating in self-governance. A democracy becomes a cargo cult when everyone is just going through the motions. When the ritualistic aspects overshadow the intended purpose of these traditions, the system fails to deliver effective governance and representation. Like cargo cults, the form is present, but the function is often lacking, leading to a system that's more performative than effective.

Pseudoscience & Cargo Cult Science

It's trivial to see how many typical pseudosciences are forms of cargo cults. From astrology to crystal healing, our society is riddled with practices and beliefs that are characterized by grand claims lacking scientifically sound justifications. Consider astrology, a belief system that attributes human character traits and destiny to the positions of celestial bodies at the time of birth. Astrology, like a cargo cult, is built on a framework of observable correlations - in this case, between celestial patterns and human behavior. Newspapers print horoscopes, and people read them feeling like they have received the daily dose of guidance or wisdom, but any true substance is lacking.

Pseudoscience mimics the surface of scientific methodology, strewn with technical jargon and often backed by testimonies or even published research, to present a veneer of credibility. But like cargo cults, these practices are divorced from true scientific inquiry and understanding, merely replicating the forms without comprehending the essence.

Even scientific endeavors aren't free of cargo cult-like behavior. The term "Cargo Cult Science" was coined by physicist Richard Feynman in his 1974 commencement address at the California Institute of Technology. The concept refers to a pseudoscientific approach that superficially mimics the scientific method but lacks the rigorous effort to disprove or delimit hypotheses. In essence, it's science that looks like science but doesn't deliver scientifically useful results. Feynman emphasized, in true scientific spirit, the importance of scientific integrity and cautioned that researchers must avoid fooling themselves and be willing to question their own theories and results.

In the realm of science, cargo culting manifests as research that goes through the motions but lacks substance. Researchers and scientists may use complex jargon, sophisticated equipment, and elaborate methodologies, but if they're not rigorously testing falsifiable hypotheses and scrutinizing their own biases, it's all for show. The danger lies in the illusion of legitimacy, which can mislead not just the researchers themselves but also the public and policymakers who rely on scientific findings.

Conclusion

So why is cargo culting so prevalent in society? The crux of the matter is that mimicry - even though it requires no true understanding - is a shortcut that often works surprisingly well. Observing others doing something successfully (in simple and familiar contexts where the causal relationships are clear and direct) is a decent signal that we can safely copy that behavior and expect similar results.

In a sense, cargo culting can be seen as a response to information overload, and while it may lack intellectual depth, it serves an ergonomically practical purpose. Nonetheless, this "mindless" mirroring will lead people to do things that feel or look productive but are, at best, indirect methods that confer no understanding, in most cases an inefficient use of time, and at worst counterproductive or directly harmful to themselves or other people.

Looking at certain kinds of group behavior, traditions, and rituals through the lens of cargo cults can help us notice where faulty thinking leads us astray. It forces us to question the rituals and traditions we mindlessly follow, urging us to dig deeper into the 'why' behind the 'what.' In essence, it's a way to describe our propensity to mistake correlation for causation and the ease with which we fall into groupthink. We can do better.

Where have you noticed cargo cult-like behaviors in your life or in society more broadly? Share your thoughts!

1. Truthfully, we don't know the full context behind why such cargo cults appeared and what they are trying to achieve. Cargo cult-like rituals by indigenous peoples have been observed as early as the 19th century, so while the Melanesian cargo cults aren't the first, they have become the most famous examples.
Over the years, many of these island communities have modernized to varying degrees, with increased exposure to education, technology, and global trade. This has led to a decline in traditional cargo cult activities. However, the cultural and religious aspects of some of these movements may still persist in modified forms. Some researchers today have come to dissuade the use of the term "cargo cult" as it can be seen as pejorative and ethnocentric, implying a "primitive" understanding of the world. The beliefs and practices associated with these movements are complex and are often interwoven with broader social, economic, and historical factors.