The recruitment process can be subtle, sometimes taking months to establish a relationship. In fact, more than two-thirds of cult members are recruited by a friend, family member, or co-worker whose invitations are harder to refuse. Once in the cult, members are subjected to multiple forms of indoctrination. Some play on our natural inclination to mimic social behaviors or follow orders. Other methods may be more intense using techniques of coercive persuasion involving guilt, shame, and fear.
And in many cases, members may willingly submit out of desire to belong and to attain the promised rewards. The cult environment discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts when everyone around you is modeling absolute faith. The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps you trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit you've been deceived. And though most cults don't lead members to their death, they can still be harmful.
By denying basic freedoms of thought, speech, and association, cults stunt their members' psychological and emotional growth, a particular problem for children, who are deprived of normal developmental activities and milestones. Nevertheless, many cult members eventually find a way out, whether through their own realizations, the help of family and friends, or when the cult falls apart due to external pressure or scandals. Many cults may be hard to identify, and for some, their beliefs, no matter how strange, are protected under religious freedom.
But when their practices involve harassment, threats, illegal activities, or abuse, the law can intervene. Believing in something should not come at the cost of your family and friends, and if someone tells you to sacrifice your relationships or morality for the greater good, they're most likely exploiting you for their own. You have JavaScript disabled. As Dr. Adrian Furnham describes in Psychology Today , humans crave clarity.
People are often surprised to learn that those who join cults are, for the most part, average people. They come from all backgrounds, all zip codes, and all tax brackets. But research done in the past two decades has found an interesting pattern: many people successfully recruited by cults are said to have low self-esteem. Cults generally do not look to recruit those with certain handicaps or clinical depression. Psychologists have different ideas about why more women than men join cults. David Bromley of Virginia Commonwealth University points out that women simply attend more social gatherings, either religious or otherwise.
This makes women statistically more likely to join groups that will ultimately victimize them. Others suggest it has to do with the fact that women have been oppressed for much of human history. Still others write this off as total crock. Stanley H. Cath, a psychoanalyst and psychology professor at Tufts University, has treated more than 60 former cult members over the course of his career. From this unique firsthand experience, Cath has noticed an interesting trend: many people who join cults have experienced religion at some point in their lives, and rejected it.
Perhaps this is surprising, considering many cults tend to be religious — or at least claim to be. But Dr. Cath asserts that this trend is a sign of something deeper. Many of those who join cults are intelligent young people from sheltered environments. Growing up in such an environment, says Dr. Cults prove powerful because they are able to successfully isolate members from their former, non-cult lives.
For the cult leader this concept could be very valuable. If the cult spends countless hours trying to convince an avid Chevy consumer to switch to Ford, not only do they risk offending the person, they also waste time and resources they could be aiming towards the easy sells like Jack.
If cults want to be successful they need to realize where their time would be used most wisely and who they should be marketing their message to. Not only are people without a spiritual identity more likely to get recruited, young adults searching for their own personal identity are more likely to join cults also.
From a psychological perspective, many youths join cults because they are in a transitional period attempting independence all the while struggling to form a sense of belonging away from home.
A cult may fulfill this need for companionship and make the young member feel stable and comforted during transition. Another argument to be made is that young adults are attempting to find their own identity as an adult and separate from the identity they may have taken as an adolescent or teen.
Young adults want to prove to themselves and others that they are equipped to make their own decisions and choose what is best for them. In addition to the search for identity that young people go through, they also have fewer time constraints than older adults. Younger people tend to have less time consuming responsibilities such as raising kids or managing their career, so in turn they have more free time and flexibility to focus on their involvement with the cult.
Naturally older adults with hectic schedules and a full load of family and social duties may not find time to devote to the cult that a young person may be able to. Young adults are just the group with the time to do such a thing. The downside to this however, is that as the young adult members age, assuming they begin to form families and pursue careers, the cult may fall to the side due to the person shifting his time to other aspects outside the cult.
Clearly it is not the case that cult members are stupid or weak minded. These people are well to do, educated and responsible adults who choose to be a part of NRMs. Individually and as a whole there are reasons why certain people join cults and how this demographic of people benefit the cult and assist it growth and prosperity.
Additionally, the fact that a high number of members fit such demographic may give the cult the upper hand. Conscious or not of these demographics, all cult leaders are preaching to an audience and the similarities among members can help to ensure a more cohesive outcome.
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