Matt Davis - 4 Psychological Techniques Cults Use To Recruit Members

4 Psychological Techniques Cults Use To Recruit Members

Hint: They hold off on talking about their alien god until much later. Key Takeaways

• The beliefs of cults and other extreme ideologies are patently bizarre to any outsider observer.
• Despite how strange their beliefs are and the stereotype, most people who get sucked into cults are relatively normal and healthy at first.
• Watching out for these four manipulative tactics can help you from getting suckered by cults, scams, and other extreme organizations.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The following in Foecast is a presentationof the Xloon Broadcast Network, Xoon TV
channel and Rellma McConnell Media Company,broadcasting from Canada to the world and beyond.
Scientologists believe that human beings are vesselsfor the ghosts of brainwashed aliens.
Heaven's Gate believed that committing mass suicidewould enable them to enter a spaceship flying

(00:24):
in the wake of the hail.Bob Comet, the leader of the branch
Davidians, said he was the Messiahand all women were his spiritual wives.
With views this crazy, the onlything crazier is that people seem to buy
into cults at all. Well,it turns out that human beings are,
under the right conditions extremely gullible.Cult members target likely candidates and use proven

(00:48):
techniques to recruit new members into thecult. Even though cults can have wildly
different beliefs, the way they recruitand retain new members tends to follow a
general pattern. There are the foursteps to getting sucked into a cult.
Scientologists often target celebrities for recruitment dueto their influence and wealth. Immanuel Dunant

(01:10):
slash AFP giddy images. As itturns 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 living in adversesocioeconomic conditions. New college students are a

(01:33):
prime example of good targets for cultrecruitment, since they're still forming their identity
and have recently been separated from theirfamilies. In addition, people who were
neglected or abused as children may beeasily recruited because they create the validation denied
them in their childhood. There's abit of a false belief out there that
cult recruits tend to be mentally ill, but this usually isn't the case.

(01:57):
Cults don't want completely unpredictable will peopleto join. Rather, they want relatively
stable people who can work to forwardthe cult's goal and donate money. Relatively
healthy people going through stressful periods,therefore, are their prime targets. Originally
coined by the Moonies, love bombingis more or less self explanatory. Having

(02:20):
identified a stressed, emotionally vulnerable target, cults flood that person with affection,
flattery, and validation. Cult awarenesseducator Ronald and Loomis described this practice on
college campuses as involving a recruiter approachingthe student and doing everything they can to
make the student feel special and unique. They are quickly trying to convey the

(02:42):
message that I am your new bestfriend, and they will fake mutual interests
in order to give the impression thatthey share many things in common. He
also described how one cult trained itsmembers to wait outside counseling centers to poach
troubled students and offer them the comfortthey would otherwise get from a trained professional.
The Waco compound of the Branch Davidians, where they had stored up an

(03:06):
arsenal of firearms in nineteen ninety three, federal agents engaged in an armed standoff
against the cult that lasted for months, ultimately ending with the compound going up
in flames. Bob Strong slash AFPGetty images. Once they've enticed a recruit
with approval or the promise of somefulfilling understanding of the universe, cultists then

(03:29):
work to isolate the recruit. Oftenthis takes the form of a weekend retreat
where the recruit is immersed in thecult's ideology over the course of a few
days. Not only are recruits physicallyisolated from friends and family members who might
otherwise provide a reality check, butcults often isolate recruits from outside information.

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Newspapers, books, TV, andweb access are all censured, ensuring that
the only reality the recruit gets toexperience is the one presented by the cult.
After convincing you that they're the bestfriends you've ever had in bombarding you
with the cult's ideology, the cultist'snext job is to make sure they hang
on to you. There's a varietyof techniques they can use to accomplish this,

(04:15):
but these usually involve iteratively subjecting thecult recruit to terror and love.
In an interview with aon, socialpsychologist Alexander Stein explained that when we are
frightened, we don't simply run awayfrom the fear, but run to a
safe haven to someone, and thatsomeone is usually a person to whom we
feel attached. But when the supposedsafe haven is also the source of the

(04:36):
fear, then running to that personis a failing strategy, causing the frightened
person to freeze, trapped between approachand avoidance. By keeping cult members totally
off balance. In this way,colts increase their members dependency on the leader,
ensuring they retain control. The exhausting, frozen state of terror and avoidance

(04:57):
overwhelms cult members and their ability tothink critically about the ideology they've suddenly committed
themselves to. Breaking out of thissituation usually requires some other ally another cult
member who has become fed up withthe system or another outside influence. Broadly,
cults retain control over their members bycontrolling the narrative. Dissenting voices offer

(05:19):
a landmark to cult members that theycan use to situate themselves and find their
way back to objective reality. Tolisten to all the shows on the X
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