Stevens and Price (1996) developed this hypothesis. The characteristics of schizoid personality serve an adaptive function under certain conditions, including mood changes, bizzarre beliefs, hallucinations, delusions and strange speech. A 'crazy' individual may act as a leader and enable one subgroup to split off from a main one, a valuable function at times when the main group has become too large to be optimum. As group sizes increase, so does predation, difficulties in finding enough food, and intragroup rivalries.
An extreme example is the cult of Jonestown where the one cult leader moved a significant number of people away from the population to live in 'peace and harmony', resulting in the death of 918 people who he persuaded to drink substance laced with cyanide, which they all knew would kill them.
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