In your opinion, what makes people susceptible to this kind of behavior?

And there is this version.

“innate or learned” is much too kind. I’m trying to figure out if by “people”, you mean the congregation, or rather “ministers” with a gimmick. In either case, there is no limit to the amount of hokum that can be foisted onto the gullible, and there is no limit to the creativity available to those who prey on the “suckers”. In the end, what difference does it make whichever pile of silliness is pushed on folks yearning to be “saved”? As Barnum pointed out “Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.”

Not sure, but it may be a version of the same thing that compels people from Georgia 4 to continue to elect Hank Johnson

Exactly what behavior are you saying they are susceptible to?

A great many people are susceptible to being led, influenced or persuaded when they either want to be part of a group or there is something important to be gained. The scenario here is one that employs suggestion, peer pressure and persuasion.

Mostly there is an initial choice made for this kind of mass behaviour I think, it is a shared experience which enables a sense of belonging and commonality. Very sadly it can be abused to the extreme as in the awful Jonestown mass suicide with people being led by a charismatic and lunatic leader they want to believe in.

It is quite amusing to watch how very carefully some people ‘fall’ while others fling themselves into the plastic chairs willy-nilly! Not so amusing to see grown up people doing this en masse in this day and age. In the UK there is a chap called Derren Brown who practices various kinds of ‘mind control’ but is transparent about his methods. He chooses people who are suggestible, empathetic and affable as his subjects openly explaining that strong-minded individuals are less likely to follow his lead or do as he suggests.

To a large extent I think the behaviour is innate in most people and might be a survival mechanism. Crowd behaviour, mass hysteria and incidences of sympathetic illness in large numbers of people are well documented. It’s a fascinating field.

Here’s an example from a very different context.

In all of these cases, there’s a high level of “buy-in” on the part of the participants, i.e. a predisposition to attribute power to the authority figure. That sets up the same dynamic of suggestibility that makes hypnosis work.

All that really happens is that the participant’s own narrative of the event gets supplanted by the narrative suggested by the authority figure. Without the suggestion, the narrative would be something like, “I dropped to the floor”; the suggested alternative narration becomes, “I was knocked down by the power of the Holy Spirit (or the chi from the master’s hands)”.

Studies of hypnosis seem to indicate that there is an innate suggestibility that makes some people good subjects for hypnosis and others not.