Cults You Know
Jim Jones
The People's Temple
Second step in cult recruitment.
Invitation to special event or place.
Brain fog, anxiety, blackouts, memory problems, seizures, hallucinations
Potential long-term negative effects.
Trance & hypnosis, trickery, personal history revision, emotional manipulation, peer pressure.
Top psychological persuasion techniques
It serves to obscure the truth, make things more confusing, and advance ulterior motives.
Cultish Language.
Bikram
Bikram Yoga
The last step in cult recruitment.
Follow up.
Physiological persuasion techniques that include pushing on eyeballs, pressing on ears, and painful manipulations.
Body Manipulations
A person’s primary frame of reference in everyday life. The context within which daily life experiences are interpreted.
Generalized Reality Orientation
Thought-terminating clichés, loaded language, re-namings and us vs. them terms.
Linguistic Red Flags
Do / Marshall Applewhite
Heaven's Gate
The one constant factor/ technique in all cult recruitment.
Rampant deception.
Cult leaders use this technique by reframing and labeling the experience as something spiritual and
positive.
Hyperventilation
Cults use peer pressuring and modeling to train new members, through overtly stated policies or by more implicit shaping, to act in ways desired by the group, and so they can do this.
Enforce group norms.
It can provide a sense of security and belonging, create the insider vs. outsider dynamic, and identify who is a true follower/believer.
Special Code Language.
Amy Carlson
Love Has Won
Attractive and full of promises for a better future.
Cult recruiter.
Speaking in tongues is more formally known as this.
Glossolalia
Designed by Milton Erickson to bypass common resistance to direct suggestions or instructions.
Naturalistic Trance Induction
Using specific phrases that divide group members from the rest of society.
Renamings / Us vs. Them
Nicole Daedone
One Taste
“…feigning friendship and interest in the recruit” through “a coordinated effort…that involves longterm members flooding recruits and newer members with flattery, verbal seduction, affectionate
but usually nonsexual touching, and lots of attention to their every remark."
Love bombing.
Hormonal changes, purgings & sweating, and gastrointestinal disturbances are all caused by changes in these.
Diet, sleep, and stress
Freedom from Abruptness, Marked Regularity of Soothing Rhythm, Vagueness of Imagery, etc.
Qualities of Trance-Inducing Poetry
They are effective because they block critical thinking.
Thought-terminating Clichés
John Humphrey Noyes
The Oneida Society
Study groups, Bible groups, social clubs, and yoga classes can all serve as this.
Front group.
Causes relaxation-induced anxiety in many people.
Mantra meditation
Consistency, Reciprocity, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, Scarcity
Cialdini's Principles of Gaining Compliance.
Words or phrases that have a strong emotional charge.
Loaded Language