Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses.
As for leadership, I am the kind who leads reluctantly and more by example than anything else. Someone had to be on the incorporation papers as president.
Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors.
High status males had multiple wives or additional mating opportunities in the ancestral environment.
Lie detection is like language; there is a learning window. Telling whoppers to small children seems to be a family tradition in many families.
Humans have evolved to be exquisitely sensitive to changes in status.
