Cults are very s about everything. Women are inferior, so you probably aren't having the best time in a cult as a woman. You don't really know that. You're being brainwashed. A study by Columbia University , focused on three groups of people, all between the ages of 22 and 32 with one group being ex-cult members, offers some reasoning behind the age demographic.
The study release said this group "can be characterized by difficulties with identity, particularly feelings of depression specifically related to identity formation Difficulties with identity formation appeared to have made this group more vulnerable to cult recruitment techniques that offer clear cut identities and prescriptions for living. And I think its kind of easy. I think that cults kind of look for people who are insecure, and those people are usually more susceptible to manipulation and all these negative psych tactics used to rope them in.
Arguably one of the most effective and widely used methods is love-bombing. The concept is to gain a target's trust by making them feel loved and accepted to essentially disguising any sign of manipulation in order to be able to influence them and the way they behave without raising suspicion. The leaders will come or the recruiters and they say 'oh we know why you're feeling sad or why you're feeling vulnerable but we can fix this and this is what we do' and they really rope you in with all these promises that they won't deliver," Fontanesi said.
Religion resonates with potential recruits as well. A lot of cult leaders like David Berg and David Koresh preached to their followers as a "prophet" or someone sent by God himself in order to make what they had to say convincing. There's so many cult leaders that think that they're the second coming of Christ or something, that they're an apostle coming down to save the world again.
Chemistry freshman Raegan Swartz and her family have seen firsthand the impact a cult can have on someone's life. Her great-grandfather was involved in a small cult near her hometown. During his high school years, he was a devout Christian. He was invited by some friends to join a spiritual group that seemed innocent initially.
He realized shortly after that something more sinister was happening around him. Around the time the shift in the nature of the club occurred, he met Swartz's great-grandmother. Not long after, they decided to get married. The leaders of the organization he was part of refused to allow them to get married at their own church. Instead, they let him invite his family and friends to the ceremony, where they addressed their suspicions as outsiders.
Swartz's grandfather denied anything was wrong. So, they got married in this building with all of his friends and his family was there and his mom was like 'hey, this seems a little weird,'" Swartz said.
It's kind of like the Freemasons. After the marriage, the cult began to exert even more pressure on the couple, even requesting they abort their first child. Well, it turns out that human beings are—under the right conditions—extremely gullible. Cult members target likely candidates and use proven techniques to recruit new members into the cult.
Even though cults can have wildly different beliefs, the way they recruit and retain new members tends to follow a general pattern.
Here are the four steps to getting sucked into a cult. Scientologists often target celebrities for recruitment due to their influence and wealth. As it turns out, most people can be susceptible to cult influence under the right conditions. Research has shown that the people who are the most susceptible to recruitment are stressed, emotionally vulnerable, have tenuous or no family connections, or are living in adverse socioeconomic conditions.
In addition, people who were neglected or abused as children may be easily recruited because they crave the validation denied them in their childhood.
Relatively healthy people going through stressful periods, therefore, are their prime targets. Originally coined by the Moonies, love-bombing is more or less self-explanatory.
Having identified a stressed, emotionally vulnerable target, cults flood that person with affection, flattery, and validation. A cult is a group or movement held together by a shared commitment to a charismatic leader or ideology. It requires a high level of commitment from at least some of the members.
Charismatic leader: The charismatic leader is the originator of the group. They know how to read people. They come along and offer a message that is going to resonate with somebody. Slowly the heat gets turned up and you go through the rituals or the study sessions that get you more and more drawn in.
As this process goes on, the person begins to adopt this new worldview that requires new behaviors and which most often requires cutting off from the past. Your mind has completely closed in on this new worldview.
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