What is cult behavior? As we see from this reader’s question, it can frustrate and confound us when people we know embrace ideas that fly in the face of reality and reason. From NXIVM to Heaven’s Gate to extreme right-wing groups, these ideologies can appear frightening when their members can’t be reasoned with in common-sense conversation.
It’s a tough sociological topic. If you’ve watched friends or family members become indoctrinated by a cult, then you know it’s often shocking and traumatic. Let’s look at the dynamics of cults and demystify them so we can see (and talk to) individuals with compassion and patience.
Dr. Green,
Thank you for this interesting column. I have a question kind of around the antivax movement, but related to MAGA, MAHA, conspiracies, right-wing news, etc. What is happening, psychologically, when people form these closed information ecosystems? Is it a form of self-protection? An element of identity? Fear? I think if I understand it better, I won’t get so frustrated trying to talk with some of these people. Thanks!
Hello Friend,
I completely understand, having had some of my loved ones and best friends “go to the cult side.” Let’s look at the latest research and science on the dynamics of cults so we can understand how they begin and evolve and why people gravitate toward them.
Who Is Susceptible to Joining a Cult?
Vulnerable people join cults. That’s the simple answer, but it’s packed with a host of fascinating variables and personalities.
Vulnerable doesn’t always mean gullible; it can also mean intelligent and idealistic. Any one of us can be attracted to a cult if timing and circumstance conspire. Catalysts can include:
- Major life transitions like divorce, the death of a loved one, moving to a new city, job loss, becoming a refugee from your home country through war and political unrest, or experiencing a near-death experience — can knock us off course in life. All of us experience crossroads or pivot points in our lives that make us question the life we thought we knew and make us insecure about what the “meaning of life” is and where we fit in.
- Isolation and a loss of sense-of-self can become existential after we’ve achieved a goal and are wondering what’s next (or if we’re marginalized in our careers or by society). We start seeking a new sense of purpose, belonging, or higher power, and have weak, disintegrating, or nonexistent support networks that might otherwise protect us from the “love bombing” tactics of cults. Cults fill a void of loneliness with artificial family structures, often using interpersonal terms such as “brothers,” “sisters,” “fathers,” and other kinship identifiers.
- Upbringings filled with neglect, abuse, or the loss or absence of one or both parents can produce runaways or victims of broken, underfunded foster care systems who are attracted to cults partly for the family pronouns that offer to make them feel whole again.
- Some individuals with idealistic worldviews, often the result of growing up in sheltered settings, are overly trusting of strangers and naïve about basic social realities. They may ignore “red flags” or that “gut feeling” to be cautious when a charismatic, manipulative person or group presents themselves. This lack of street smarts and suspension of critical thinking make them easy targets for groups that seem loving and accepting.
- Studies indicate that cult members are often well-educated from middle-to-upper classes and have more resources to “find themselves.” With resources like money readily available, and lack of motivators to achieve, cults become a substitute for meaningful work and hard-earned achievements.
Anyone can be recruited by a cult under the right circumstances because these groups target basic human needs for love, safety, and belonging.
How Do Cults Start?
Cults usually start with a charismatic, narcissistic leader who exploits social or individual vulnerabilities to establish a high-control group, typically promising exclusive enlightenment, salvation, or utopian community.
The leader then cultivates a small group of devotees instructed to “recruit” new members. Recruiters focus on individuals experiencing loneliness, life transitions, etc. (see above). Cults develop during times of social, economic, or spiritual crisis, filling a void left by declining traditional structures. When an individual is recruited, the group gradually isolates them from friends and family, demanding increasing loyalty to the leader, who often becomes a source of absolute truth.
Ideological Transformation is a process by which old beliefs are replaced with a new, closed-system ideology. Aided by social networking technology, an “us versus them” mentality has increased the rate at which vulnerable people are exposed to undue influence in cults. This redefines one’s reality and self.
“Undue Influence does NOT erase the person’s old identity but rather creates a new identity to suppress the old one. After different types of manipulation, the creation of a new identity is done step-by-step by formal indoctrination sessions and informally by members, videos, games, movies, publications, and social/digital media. Behavior modification techniques are employed, such as rewards/punishments, thought-stopping, and control of environment (isolation or restriction of access to others). And then the new identify is reinforced and the old identify suppressed.”
– Steven A Hassan, Ph.D. “Understanding Cults: The Basics” Psychology Today, June 5, 2021
How Can We Convince Someone to Leave a Cult?
In the 1970s-1990s, cult deprogramming involved often unlawful involuntary abduction and coercion; it had a low success rate due to its forceful and controversial techniques. This morphed into “exit counseling,” which involves education, building trust, and reality testing.
The Strategic Interactive Approach, developed by mental health expert Steven Hassan, is a non-coercive, empowering approach to helping people leave cults that encourages a positive, warm relationship between cult members and their families while helping to raise essential questions for cult members to consider. This recovery model helps participants identify and distinguish their cult identity from their authentic identity, working toward integrating parts of the authentic identity (that were coopted by the cult identity) into a whole mind.
Is Social Media Toxic?
Social media has made self-created social or navel-gazing bubbles intense and addictive. Worse, some of the current online gatherings of like-minded people have become noxious and malignant, creating cult-like echo-chambers that concentrate and distort negative, violent, and nihilistic emotions. This situation has motivated people with mental health problems to commit horrible crimes, murders, stalking, terrorism, and empowers emotions of general hate for society. Social media distorts reality and is destroying the universal social contract between humans. And it’s addictive, by design, for the profit of the social network titans on a global scale.
Social media can be a double-edged sword. Tech giants and their social media platforms have very little oversight by the government because of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, a U.S. law protecting online platforms from liability for user-generated content and allowing them to moderate content in “good faith.” It provides immunity for hosting, promoting, or removing third-party content. Many experts argue Section 230 should be abolished and more federal oversight on social media should be enacted to prevent what has become a very toxic and harmful psychological poison in our global society.
How Can I Respond to Radical People, Such as MAGA Fans, Climate Deniers, or Anti-Vaxxers?
Understanding how people get into cults and cult-like movements is critical to help guide future conversations.
When we see that a person’s visions, values, and missions feel averse to what we understand of real science and even reality itself, we can try to socialize with them using a mix of boundaries, gently targeted questions (that may seem confrontational to them), and compassion. Focus on specific, shared values to find common ground to build rapport before addressing differences. Maintain calm and self-control over aggressiveness and don’t let them monopolize the conversation.
One approach is to use the Socratic Method, in lay terms: Instead of stating opposing facts, which are often dismissed as “fake news,” ask questions that encourage them to think through their own logic or critical thinking.
If you’re speaking with someone close to you who has changed, try to remember who they were before and guide the conversation with little reminders of how they used to be. Changing a viewpoint is a slow process. You may need to make some distance or disengage for a period of time to protect yourself from frustration and anger; these conversations can become confrontational with folks trying insistently to drive home their point of view. Don’t ratchet up your level of frustration in response — that never works.
If a conversation becomes unproductive, emotional, or disrespectful, you have the right to end it by simply walking away. Protect your own mental peace by accepting what you can’t control.
I hope these concepts and approaches are helpful.
Dr. Green
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Disclaimer: This column is not a replacement for therapy, and the advice given is educational in nature, not a replacement for professional psychological or psychiatric therapy. This is a peer-driven support effort by The Revelator to inform and build community with environmental and wildlife defenders.
If you are feeling critically depressed and suicidal, it’s time to immediately find professional help. Go to your closest emergency room or call the following numbers to get immediate help in your area:
SUICIDE HOTLINES
Worldwide: http://www.befrienders.org/support/
United Kingdom: http://www.samaritans.org
1-800-273-TALK
Resources:
Factors related to susceptibility and recruitment by cults National Institutes of Health. (Curtis, J M, and M J Curtis. “Factors related to susceptibility and recruitment by cults.” Psychological reports vol. 73,2 (1993): 451-60. doi:10.2466/pr0.1993.73.2.451).
The International Cultic Studies Association ICSA is not an activist or advocacy group, but a unique nonprofit organization grounded in three pillars: advancing knowledge, fostering open dialogue, and supporting recovery from cultic and coercive influence.
The Center for Humane Technology This nonprofit is dedicated to ensuring that today’s most consequential technologies, such as AI and social media, actually serve humanity. We bring clarity to how the tech ecosystem works in order to shift the incentives that drive it.
Film: “The Social Dilemma”
Film: “The Brainwashing of My Dad”
The Freedom of Mind Resource Center Founded by leading cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan, a former member of the notorious Moonies cult in the 1970s who experienced firsthand the devastating effects of undue influence and coercion. His escape from the Moonies and subsequent recovery process inspired him to dedicate his life to understanding and exposing the deceptive tactics used by cults and manipulative groups.
“Why do people join cults?” TedEd with Janja Lalich
“Why People Join Cults and Why They Stay” by Stephen Mather
Previously in The Revelator:
Feeling Anxiety About Climate Change and Other Environmental Threats? These Five New Books Can Help