I've been seriously bitten by this, and find it more scary than fascinating. Growing up, I thought people who followed cult leaders and charismatic narcissists were so stupid (still do), it appeared so transparent to me. Later, in my professional and adult life I found myself to be equally gullible when intelligent people were abusive or outright dumb in other areas. This has been a challenge to unlearn, like learning an old dog to sit. Basically, our proxies for predicting people's character range from bad to terrible.