Types of Cults

• 1. Religious

  Bible-based, eastern-religion, occult, or completely invented. Claim to be spiritual, but their practices reveal a material focus

• 2. Political

  Examples: Move, Aryan Nation, Freemen (Montana), Red Brigade, Lyndon LaRouche

• 3. Psychotherapy/Educational

  TM, Human Potential, est (Forum)

• 4. Commercial

  pyramid schemes, money-making "secrets"

Who are the targets?

People who are looking for:

• happiness
• affection
• attention
• something better in life
• more wisdom
• more knowledge
• better health

Cults seek to recruit strong, caring, and motivated people.

Where and when are you a target?

Methods of approaching not likely to be categorized as a persuasion episode.

When people are vulnerable and/or undergoing a lifestage transition.

Creating and Maintaining a Cult

• 1. Create your own social reality

• 2. Create a "granfalloon"

• 3. Create commitment via dissonance reduction.

• 4. Establish the leader's credibility and attractiveness.

• 5. Proselytize the "unredeemed."

• 6. Interrupt "undesirable" thoughts

• 7. Fixate members on a "phantom."

Persuasion tools:

• Thought reform / control

• Recreate individual's identity

• Limit outside/contradictory information

• Escalating commitments

• Emotional aversion to leaving

• Self-blame for "failures"

• *Keep target "unaware" of process

Interesting Websites:

• www.csj.org/

• www.ex-cult.org/#cultlinks

Some of these websites have links to the home pages of the organizations they criticize (e.g., Unification Church, Scientology).