464. The psychology of cults

0:05 Hello everybody, I'm Gemma Speck and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast and welcome back to another episode where we break down the psychology behind everything from relationships to wellness trends to our 20s and today, cults. This is very unlike our usual episodes.

0:44 If you're a long time listener, you know, but I couldn't help myself. I can't help myself. If there's one thing that fascinates me more than anything about human psychology, it is what drives people to leave the common ground of everyday society and join extremist alternative groups that often have very crazy ideas about the world that are highly irrational and mystical and a complete departure from reality. But people kind of believe it anyways. You know, groups like the one behind the Jonestown massacre were like, how many was it? 900 people all committed suicide in the name of their cult or These groups that live entirely isolated from society, believing that some random guy from Idaho is like, Jesus,

1:30 what is the psychological appeal? And what gets someone, often very normal people, to a place of wanting to join and refusing to leave cults, even when it harms them? This is what, well, exactly what we're exploring today, the deep and fascinating domain of cult psychology. I also want to talk about modern cults or things that we label as cults. The cult of Taylor Swift, the cult of Donald Trump, the cult of Disney adults. What makes these things cult-like? What gets people obsessed and devoted and fanatical over these people and over these experiences? We're also going to touch on a very huge ongoing debate. What is the difference between a cult and and a religion. How do researchers separate the two? What are the criteria for

2:26 labeling something a cult or labeling something a religion? And where does money come into that? Because I don't know if you know, but a big part of whether something is a cult or not is not psychological. It is, and all does come down to taxes. It's a huge episode. I know there's so many little twists and turns. I don't want to waste any more time with this intro and But a quick reminder, if you're listening to this episode, I want to let you know you can now watch this episode plus many more on Netflix. There will be a link in the description, so go and check it out.

2:59 But without further ado, let's get into the complete psychology of cults. I think we all have an idea of what a cult is. You know what a cult is. You've seen it in movies, you've seen it on crime podcasts, in the news, but if somebody asked for a definition, I think I'd be pretty stumped. I don't think I'd be able to give them an exact word for word idea.

3:24 Like you kind of know it when you see it. That's kind of, I think that's what I would go with, which is not a very good definition. Luckily, some very smart researchers have thought about this a lot deeper than me. And whilst it is actually a very debated topic, typically for something to be labeled a cult is it does have to meet a few criteria. So in short, cults are A, social groups. So they have to be made up of more than a dozen or so people. B, they have to have unusual or some kind of extreme belief, whether it's religious, spiritual, or philosophical, and they have to have rituals that go along with that belief. C, they have to have extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal. D, it has to involve some kind of

4:11 manipulation or control tactic. that makes it hard to leave, means that people cannot willingly come and go. The most popular criteria for telling if something is a cult or not is called the BITE model of authoritarian control. This was developed by the researcher and the cult expert, Stephen Hassan, I think back in like the nineties. And BITE is obviously an acronym, which everyone loves an acronym. If you want to sell a theory, let me say, make it into another word. Like that's my first bit of advice.

4:45 People love acronyms, but BITE, this acronym stands for Be Behavior Control. So a cult has to regulate the physical reality of somebody. So how they live, where they live, how they work, how they dress. It typically manages their money, their time. It requires a great deal of obedience physically and in terms of their lifestyles. I is information control.

5:09 A cult will deliberately withhold or distort information. So this involves often minimizing access to non-group thinking and really restricting communication with outsiders. T is thought control. So a cult wants members to believe in absolute truth. They often use thought-stopping techniques. Yes, like separating people from their relatives, but also like chanting or meditation to block critical analysis, and often requires members to reframe their memories to fit the group narrative. And E, it involves emotional control. A cult manipulates a person's feelings, primarily through fear and through the installation of irrational fears. So fears of the outside world, of others, of damnation, of punishment. But also the cult

6:03 leader is is presented as the one who will save them from this. And the cult leader cannot do any wrong. This bite model is really important because, as I mentioned in the intro, in popular culture, we've all heard people describe things as cults, which may or may not actually be cults. The cult of yoga, the cult of Disney adults, the cult of reality TV, the cult of road beauty, the cult of Lululemon, whatever it is. But These things don't cause tremendous harm on a wide member basis. They don't change someone's psychological reality, at least not most of the time. I'm sure you can really go in pretty deep and have that happen, but there isn't some global leader trying to make that happen. What we're really trying

6:48 to say when we describe these things as cult-like is that they inspire a kind of devotion. And it's not uncommon to see people highly dedicated to something and defend that very thing to an irrational end, but it's not a cult. I think, especially with celebrity worship though, and celebrity culture, maybe like the lines kind of blur, you know, and we do see very irrational behavior. When we form a parasocial bond with somebody, we defend them like a friend, but also like a God. And it's intense, but is it a cult? So let's take the example of Taylor Swift, who I think it's the center of more than anything else, cultish accusations. In researching this episode, I cannot tell you how many PhD dissertations, articles, podcasts, the like, are written

7:39 on the cult of Taylor Swift. Let's look at the evidence that she's this big mastermind running this huge domain of followers, and then we'll look at the evidence against. So firstly, she does have a dedicated social group, the Swifties. That name alone separates you from being in or out of the group, which is fundamental to groupthink identity, a huge component of cultish thinking. Within the group, there can be extreme defensiveness and the policing of narratives. When any criticism of Swift comes in, it's met with very fierce backlash.

8:13 She can do no wrong. The way that her Swifties defend her at every turn, no matter what, that does indicate an irrational loyalty that makes her almost inhuman, so incapable of doing wrong, forgivable at every turn, which mimics the idea of somebody who is godlike or a godlike figure. What's more, I would say many fans experience a very deep parasocial relationship to her that feels two-sided, even if it's one-sided. And this includes a strong sense of personal intimacy and like a spiritual connection to her lyrics. Swifties pour over every word that she writes, almost like scripture. right?

8:56 The same way people pour over their Bibles. They feel that what she's writing, her music is for them and them alone. There is an emotional attachment to these words. There is a sense that her lyrics don't just give life meaning or advice or solace, but they kind of ride out the truth or a correct way to live life or to think about life. Other examples of cult-like behavior include dedicated rituals. This is kind of a fun exercise, but it's true. Making friendship bracelets, decoding cryptic Easter eggs in her music. Those are rituals. Treating concerts like communal events?

9:33 Kind of cult-like. You know, during her last tour, there were reports that fans experienced memory loss, confusion, hysteria. That's similar to reports of religious mass hysteria we see in cults like the People's Temple and more. But there is a big difference, and there's a reason I wanted to go into this. There is a big difference between being a diehard Swifty and being part of a cult. Firstly, to be a Swifty doesn't involve coercion or isolation. Fans are free to leave. They're free to lose interest. They are free to listen to other music at any time without facing threats or isolation from their real world lives.

10:15 Somebody isn't going to come and hurt them. Additionally, a Swifty is are just another iteration of a type of fan behavior that we've seen time and time again. We saw it with the Beatles. We saw it with Elvis, Michael Jackson, with BTS. For the majority of people, they may adore her, but she is not the complete and utter center of their lives in a way that they are so scared of her and the ideology that they will not leave. You know, most people will likely have friends or family members that are not Swifties that are out of these so-called cults. And most people will say like, I don't live and die according to Taylor Swift's lyrics.

10:59 It's interesting though, it's an important exercise of like how things do overlap. And it raises that second important point that we made in the beginning, which is what distinguishes not just a person or a pop star from being a cult, but a religion, a real true religion from being a cult. Some people might say there's no difference.

11:19 Some people. Let's talk about it though. Our religion, like a cult, is an organized social group. Like a cult, there is often a uniform way of thinking. There is often an absolute truth centered around God. There are traditions and sacred rituals. There may even be fear, often of hell or some kind of damnation. And there may be some kind of coercive control. in some situations. But in general, there is an important distinction the same way there is an important distinction between Taylor Swift and cults. Most healthy religions offer kind of an open door policy. They basically say, hello, please come in. If you want to join us, we'd love to have you for as long as you like, you can come and go. There's no sign up for

12:10 your commitment required unless you'd like to, of course. Come if you'd like, stay if you wish. leave if you wish as well. That is a healthy religion. And healthy religions also encourage people to engage with broader society. They allow you to maintain relationships with family and friends outside of the faith, and they allow you to participate in normal civic life. If they don't, that's when they become a cult. There's also often not totalitarian control other than from like God or Jesus or Allah or a higher power.

12:43 I will say we've seen a lot of instances of religious leaders misusing their power in a way that would be seen as a form of totalitarian, cruel, harmful control. You know, the Catholic Church just got to single them out. That's probably the best example in recent memory. But still, that's one segment of the religion. That is not the entire thing. A cult, almost all aspects of it, will be highly authoritarian. And it's almost always centered around a single living leader. They actively isolate members from family. They encourage them to cut them out. And I feel like I'm really laboring over this point. It's just intensely psychological.

13:29 It's everything. It dictates everything in their lives. Another critical element which distinguishes a cult from a religion, which I read about in a paper from the University of California, Berkeley, This paper is titled, Who Decides the Difference Between a Cult and a Religion? I was so surprised by this.

13:47 It comes down to something very arbitrary, which is taxes. Religions are tax exempt. Cults are not. And who decides whether religion is a religion? The government. And sometimes they get it wrong. It all comes back to money, to be honest. For example, the Church of Scientology. Most of us would say, cult, right? It's actually a religion. They don't pay taxes. They are deemed by the IRS to be a legitimate religion, despite all we know, despite the disappearances of members, despite isolationism, despite fear mongering. It is not just harm that determines if something's going to be a cult. It's so many layers of things. And eventually, as I said, it comes back to money. How much money, how many lawsuits basically does it take to buy your

14:39 way out of cult status and into the status of a legitimate religion. So to get more into the emotional human side of things, how do cults even form in the first place? I think we need to take a short break here before we get into this research because it is truly fascinating and the personality of cult leaders is an episode of its own. We're going to try and cover it all after this short break. I feel like these days, you and I have seen enough cult documentaries to know the warning signs. We kind of get it.

15:18 That doesn't look good. We don't want to join that kind of organization. However, there are an estimated 10,000 active cults in the United States alone. Knowing what we know, how do people continue to join these things? How do they even start? So cults often start with one person. This is what we call the charismatic leader or the visionary.

15:39 This person has an idea of the world that they want to impress on others. Now, sometimes this is, and it begins as a legitimate and sincere view that they think would genuinely guide or help other people. Often though, this person does normally have an underlying desire for something more. They want control. They want power. They want financial gain.

16:00 They want adoration. And I was reading this paper that said a big warning sign is that this person has often tried to get that thing they want through other means unsuccessfully first. So they have tried to gain power through maybe a formal religion before getting kicked out, through business and money or fame before they've tried this cult thing, through control of their family. This is a very critical thing.

16:24 A lot of cults start not just with an individual, but with an individual and their family. The family is often the first victim, the first people to be brought in. There was research published in 2024 in the Encyclopedia of Religious Psychology and Behavior that also identified how most, not all, but most cult leaders share a specific personality type. If you have done any kind of psychology course, you might guess what this is. It's called the dark triad, which combines narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, otherwise known as a cluster B personality type. They are seductive. They are impulsive. They are emotionally intense. They have a flair for grandiosity, a chronic fear of abandonment. All of this makes them basically

17:13 like a social weapon because they have such a low self-esteem and they have all the tools to execute their desire to gain other people's approval. This is an important point to emphasize. These people are brilliant, to be honest, and nobody really willingly joins a cult. They join this person because they think they're amazing. They join a movement that looks good and helpful and at first seems really incredible. They, you know, they've probably encountered something that they really think is going to change their life. Any good cult, good in quotation marks, knows that the best kind of indoctrination takes time and they will go about it slowly. They really, it's like putting a frog in boiling water. When a

18:00 potential recruit meets, let's say a cult member, they are normally showered with love. They are showered with validation. That feels amazing. Love bombing is the term that we would give that in a relationship. And in fact, the term love bombing was actually first coined by a cult, a cult known as the Unification Church. And members of this cult were basically formally instructed to flood new recruits with gifts and flattery and warmth. And they wanted them to feel really valued and safe. They called that the hook.

18:33 And then once somebody was addicted to this feeling, the affection would end and it would be replaced by very strict rules and by emotional manipulation. And by then it's too late. It's like a relationship. By then they feel so indebted and bonded to this person or this group. They deeply believe that the good feelings are going to come back. They can't leave. That is the origin of the term love bombing. It's cult recruitment. Something else happens at the stage as well. Even if the person doesn't want to leave, so they're having a lot of fun with their new friends and with their fun cult leader, cults know that their family and friends will definitely want them to leave and that they can be very, very persuasive.

19:14 They're going to do everything in their power to either cut them out or bring them in. They will convince them that they're evil if they don't want to join the cult. They don't love them like the cult does. They may force them to surrender their money and their belongings and their identity and their bodies to the cult leader.

19:34 Sometimes new members are compelled to marry people they've just met really, really quickly. They may use deprivation, punishment, other tactics to wear this person down after they've encountered the most amazing feeling of love they ever had. They make them swear oaths, anything that's going to psychologically hook them in.

19:54 This is when the love is replaced by fear, two of the most powerful and convincing human emotions mixing together in this extreme circumstances, and two emotions that are often It's biologically and psychologically impossible to ignore. Our brain is hardwired to pay attention to love and fear. The cult goes, you know, we love you. No one else does. If you leave, like you're going to give up this love, but you're also going to give up so much more.

20:18 You're going to be punished. Your way of life is going to be destroyed. We're going to hurt you. It's like a scaled up version of a toxic relationship with a manipulative controlling partner, but it's happening with this whole group of other people. I should say I've emphasized cults which operate around like a centralized person, important time to say not all cults have this. And this can lead people to believe that what they're experiencing isn't a cult if there isn't a leader. They think it's a community.

20:49 They think it's a friendship. In this situation where there isn't a charismatic leader, the followers of said cult brainwash each other instead. In the absence of this one person in a decentralized cult, it's called, the ideology replaces the leader or a specific text or an overarching conspiracy theory, a shared lifestyle, that becomes the ultimate authority and the ultimate truth. Any deviation or questioning of this doctrine is quickly punished, not by the leader, but by the community itself.

21:25 In this situation, extreme peer pressure kind of replaces top-down commands. Members constantly police one another, They expel or shun people as well. And in the digital age, online communities and online cults do this more than anybody else. The mob mentality quickly kind of pushes and punishes dissenters. To be part of the group, you have to believe exactly what they believe. They want radical conformity. And there are countless examples of this on the internet. QAnon is a massive one.

21:59 There is no central charismatic leader. who is holding political physical rallies and giving direct daily orders to the masses. Instead, it's such a tight ideology that members collaboratively build the dogma, build the conspiracy theories, decode clues together, and they aggressively excommunicate anyone who has questions, meaning that the conspiracy theory remains solid. There can also be, in these decentralized cult situations, kind of a hierarchical structure. There's no one core leader, but there is always somebody above you. And even the person at the top, there's somebody above them. And that extreme pressure of like, who do I trust? Everybody's always watching one another. Authorities flowing in every single direction is

22:49 powerful enough to mean that you don't need somebody as a central command. I think at its core, the danger of any cult lies with this, with this systematic, stripping of critical thinking and personal autonomy. You cannot think for yourself anymore. You think only the way the cult wants you to. So again, this is the question that comes up. Why?

23:10 Why do people join this? Why do they end up in these situations? I think I have a lot of empathy. I think that you can't really understand how compelling the situation must be until you've been through it. I think this is the same line of questioning that comes up when people are like, why don't you leave? an abusive relationship or a bad friendship or a bad job, what is underlying this desire to join and this desire to stay is deeply, deeply human. Number one, the reason that people often join cults is because they have a need to belong. In 1995, there were these two researchers, Roy Boimester and Mark Leary. We've talked about them before. And they basically presented this now very incredibly famous paper that said,

23:57 Needing to feel seen and cared for is as essential to our survival as humans as the need for food, water, and shelter. It has the same gravitational pull. Cults offer to fulfill this innate desire to an extreme. It provides members with a tight-knit community. They are dedicated to one another. They are dedicated to a cause. They offer the promise that you're never going to be alone again. You're never going to be alone. As long as you follow some simple rules, you will always have family, you will always have friends, you will always have somebody who cares about you.

24:30 When someone feels socially adrift or very isolated, they become a perfect candidate in that moment. Research conducted in 2017 by a group of experts in France actually found that a big number of people who join cults are in periods of major life transition. So they're transitioning into adulthood. They're transitioning out of foster care. They're transitioning out of a relationship into retirement. They often have an eroded social system because of this transition they're going through. Those who are susceptible to cult recruitment might also be running away from something, an unhappy life situation, addiction, abuse, a bad relationship, pressure to behave a certain way that they don't agree with,

25:19 can no longer agree with. In some ways, it makes a lot of logical sense that that would leave them vulnerable to this situation, especially if you've gone through abuse. Someone who has consistently suffered through things like psychological or physical or mental abuse, A, they would be looking for an escape, but B, they would also be more vulnerable to some of the same practices of love bombing and fear that a cult uses because it feels normal and familiar.

25:46 They don't see red flags like you or I would, because they've only ever known red flags. Many cults are also tied to a spiritual ideology as we spoke about. So a higher power, a God, something that will explain why the world is as ugly and confusing as it is, whether it's lizards or I don't know, whatever. This is immensely appealing. Even if we can rationally say that doesn't make any sense. If you are seriously at a low point in your life and you've experienced maybe a crisis of faith in your previous religion, or you don't know what the future holds, or you are so lost in the world, having a spiritual belief system delivered to you that feels very compelling, and a social structure that is

26:30 built around that, that sounds like an amazing deal. And only a little bit of it has to actually make sense if you are in a really dark place for you to just really want anything to hold on to. There is this stereotype that The only people who join cults are unintelligent. They lack thinking skills. They're not very practical.

26:57 Maybe they're dumb. And that creates a lot of shame. It's actually one of the reasons why people don't leave because they know that they're going to be faced with this wall of like, how could you not know? You should have known better. The thing is, cults and coercive groups, do not rely on stupidity. They rely on emotional needs and they rely on a very well-versed knowledge of human psychology.

27:26 In fact, someone being intelligent is an asset. They may be more likely to be targeted. It's an asset to that cult because somebody who is smart will then be in turn very adept at recruiting more people. They're very good at engaging in manipulation tactics. They're very good at evading authorities. They become helpful and desirable. There's something else going on as well in this situation, and it has to do with the very same dopamine systems that explain why we get hooked on drugs, why we get hooked on gambling, on food, on nicotine. It is this addiction model that may explain why seemingly normal people end up in these situations. We're going to talk about it after this short break. So something... as I hinted to, that's

28:16 being increasingly discussed in the cult psychology space is this idea that those people who join cults may actually be experiencing a form of human or relational addiction. And they may have been more susceptible to addictive patterns or addictive habits in the past or in the first place. There was a study from 2017 and interviewed 31 former cult members in Sweden and And it discovered that a lot of them were displaying behaviors that match what we call Goodman's addictive disorders criteria. The Goodman's criteria is a very common tool used in psychology to identify whether somebody is in active addiction. They can be addicted to anything. It's used for alcohol. It's used for food, sex, social media.

29:05 People can also be addicted to the behaviors and the feelings of others and the behavior and feeling of being in a cult. That is what this research has started to show. For example, here are some of the criteria for being in a state of addiction according to this model. A, you feel that you may lack control. You may feel a sense of relief when you encounter the stimulus or you participate in the activity or the cult. You may have an inability to resist the thing and increasing tolerance for the thing so you become more and more accustomed to a certain level of the feeling or the behavior and it affects you less and less. A great deal of time is spent with the thing that you're addicted to.

29:46 It's difficult to cut out the thing that you're addicted to. It's difficult to think about anything other than the thing you are addicted to. Replace thing with cult. The same neurological systems that drive cravings and intense desires are working in this situation. In fact, a lot of those individuals who we were speaking about initially actually reported having some other kind of addiction or some addiction in their past, whether it's to alcohol or gambling. And the researchers basically suggested that when they joined the cult, they replaced the substance addiction with an addiction to the system. A switch was made. This is a critical part of this research.

30:26 These people were already neurologically, some would say biologically, and definitely psychologically vulnerable for something to come in and provide them with the relief that maybe alcohol or gambling or a substance had done in the past. And it felt a lot healthier because it felt like connection. This is a critical part. I keep saying that, but this is a critical part of this research. there was an incredibly high prevalence and there is an incredibly high prevalence of psychiatric conditions in people prior to joining cults. A lot of people over half from the study suffered from anxiety disorders and mood disorders in the lead up to when they joined. And interestingly, the majority of participants reported at

31:17 first feeling better, feeling psychological relief when they first got involved with their cult. Their symptoms of anxiety and depression were And distress reduced the same way that when you first take alcohol or painkillers, your feelings of depression and anxiety reduce. It feels like you're a savior. It feels like you found a thing that's going to give you a center until you need more and more of it to feel good and until it really becomes the center of your world and until it starts ruining your life.

31:47 That is the cult addiction pathway. I really want to emphasize something here. It is actually not as rare as you think for someone to be in a cult or to have encountered a cult or to have at least felt some kind of pull towards this system. There is this man, he's since passed, but his name was Arthur Dyckman, I think, Dyckman, Dyckman. He was a professor of psychiatry at the University of California and he did a lot of work around cults and around social belonging and asking the same question we're asking today. What drives people to perform this social behavior? And in this quest for answers, he conducted this series of seminars. Maybe it's like, I guess, a meeting. He just invited a bunch of former cult

32:34 members in the 90s to this big conference and he spoke to them. And what he said in his report on it was, these people are so normal. They are so normal. And he also said a lot of their experiences in joining a cult are very similar to everyday experiences that we would have in work, in politics, in relationships, and in traditional religions, which made it hard for them to tell that something bad was going on. Diekmann had this one sentence that I think really gripped people. He said, people join cults not because they are crazy, but because they have two kinds of wishes. They want a meaningful life, and they want to feel taken care of and protected.

33:14 Those are the two reasons people join cults. If you think about it, this is the exact same reason We pursue certain careers. We want meaning. We want to feel taken care of. It's the same reason we vote for certain political parties, why we date certain people, why we choose a certain lifestyle, why we choose a certain diet, why we choose certain friends. Even when we get things like plastic surgery, we think it will make our life more meaningful. We think it will make our life happier because we will achieve greater acceptance. Everything and anything can be a cult. If the marketing is good enough and the manipulation is there and the community is is strong, even certain brands, certain diets, certain movements, like we said,

33:57 Disney adults, it's not a cult. It definitely could become one. If they found a charismatic leader who wanted to do harm, that is literally like so many of the systems that we have are just not being manipulated and therefore don't get the cult name. So with that in mind, if that's why people join them for these very human reasons, why don't people leave once they realize something is going wrong?

34:20 As we've realized, people join cults for the belonging and for the love and for the meaning, and they stay in cults because of the isolation and the fear and the cost of leaving. In that same study, the one from 2017 with the 31 former cult members, these same people, they were asked, why did you join? And they were asked, why didn't you leave? And the biggest thing they said was, my whole life was there. I had given it everything.

34:49 These people were my family. If I left, I would have nothing. It is the sunk cost fallacy that we all experience on a whole new scale. Of course, yes, there's the relationships that people are losing, which directly contradicts that human need to belong. So it's going to feel painful. It's going to act as a motivational force to stay.

35:15 But there's also practical things like money. People in serious cults often haven't had a job in the real world for a long time. All their finances are wrapped up in the cult. They have been asked to invest all their money to sign away the deeds to their house, the deeds to their future earnings. Somebody might say, why don't they just go to the police? Why don't they go to charity? Why don't they go to government services for help? You know, yeah, it's the practical concerns. They may not have their birth certificate, their passport. They may not literally have public transport to leave the physical location.

35:48 And then there's the most important element of all. As much as they fear the cult and they fear what's happening, they fear what's beyond and the unknown even more. Many people are initially, as we said, attracted to cults because they're scared, they're vulnerable, they believe the wider world to be bad or to be confusing. Cults then magnify this and indoctrinate their followers to further that sense of evil.

36:18 They want them to believe this is the only place you are safe. This is a sanctuary. You have to stay here. If you were to leave, terrible things would happen to you. And if you say that to somebody enough times, they believe it. I read this interview with a woman who left like a very isolated cult in Australia.

36:34 And she said she truly believed that people outside the cult would kill her, eat her and poison her. She was born into the cult like her mother had joined as a single mother. And how would she know that wasn't true? She'd never met an outsider. She had no alternative evidence to what she'd been told. It is like you or I trying to imagine a color that we haven't seen before. You just can't. She could not fathom that other people would feel safe. There was another person, I think it was in the same article, who escaped a cult in South Korea and they did this interview with The Guardian. He was like, I genuinely believed the cult leader could hear my thoughts. So I couldn't even think, I was so indoctrinated. The thought of leaving didn't even

37:18 enter my mind because it felt so blasphemous and dangerous. His brain was trained into avoiding the very idea of leaving itself. It's here where we have to talk about the psychology of Stockholm syndrome, right? Feeling like the only safe thing is the thing that's hurting you. shameless self-promotion here.

37:37 We did recently do a full bonus episode on this. It's not on Netflix. It's only on Spotify. We did it a month or so back. It's like a full history of Stockholm Syndrome. It's very fascinating. So if you liked this episode, you'll probably love that one. And it's the reason why I'm not getting fully into this. But Stockholm Syndrome definitely applies in cult situations, probably more than anything else, which we explored in that episode. A brief overview, Stockholm Syndrome is was a term that was born from a hostage situation in Sweden in 1973. And in this situation, it was very strange. These hostages developed deep empathy for their captors. They even defended them in the aftermath. And everybody in the news, all these rescuers were like, that

38:21 is so unnatural. How could you feel any form of love or empathy for somebody who has harmed you? It has since become, we know it's a psychological phenomenon. And we know what it derives from is the fact that humans will do anything to survive and to adapt under extreme pressure. And if the only way for them to do that is to form a connection or an attachment with the very people who are going to harm them, if that's their only avenue to safety, they will do that.

38:48 In a cult setting, like so many parallels, so many parallels to that hostage kind of situation. Firstly- As a follower, you are probably experiencing small acts of kindness that convince you that it can't be that bad. Your needs are probably taken care of. That creates a whole nother layer of dependency. And so you're scared. You feel like your freedom is being curtailed, but you also feel grateful. Your basic needs are being taken care of. And that is difficult to abandon. It's difficult to feel like, wait, something that wants to harm me probably wouldn't take care of me this well. and this creates a sense that they are indebted they should be grateful even as their other needs like perhaps don't feel fulfilled their primary needs are

39:40 like with Stockholm syndrome as well cult followers may also identify with the aggressor or the cult leader and There might be some similarities. They joined the cult for a reason. Obviously, there is some kind of shared vision or shared values that lines up. It becomes hard to disentangle oneself the same way someone may see themselves in a captor or in a Stockholm Syndrome situation because they need to see them as like them so they can understand them and survive.

40:11 Of course, when people are in a violent situation like in Sweden in 1973, Outsiders can clearly see that something is wrong and they can intervene. But when it comes to removing someone from a cult situation that they may be choosing to be in, things get very complicated. So when somebody does manage to leave a cult, how do they feel afterwards? That's the natural next step, right? It's going to feel, of course, like every human experience, very different.

40:42 But from what I've read, it's deeply traumatic, even if they know it's the right choice. I think the biggest way it's going to differ from person to person is whether someone chose to exit the cult willingly, whether they were subject to some kind of involuntary reprogramming, or whether the cult imploded in on itself and in on them.

41:03 There are so many examples of this happening. There was this cult in Oregon in the 80s. Money and taxes comes into this a lot more than you think. And This cult was, I can't remember what it was called, but it was basically the huge utopia in the middle of the desert. And it fell apart like overnight because of a federal investigation into money laundering. And here are these people who joined not for money, for religious reasons, and they were basically all flung back into the world completely unprepared. Like they really, they'd been there for a while.

41:32 They had to adjust overnight. A study from 2023 looked at former cult members' experiences of leaving and And what they found was this in-between stage. They've just exited the cult, but they're not yet fully integrated back into society. And in this study, they closely examined 11 individuals who were going through this, who had cult experiences and who had left.

41:56 And they found that almost all of them described a state of internal psychological chaos immediately after leaving where they were like, I don't know if I've made the right choice and I feel worse than I ever have before. In the study, the former cult members described having, a lot of them had lived in this like honor culture where acts of violence were very normalized. And that itself required a lot of deprogramming and processing because A, like they'd rejoined society and they had to know you can't, this eye for the eye justice doesn't work here. It's not tolerated. B, they had to be okay and know that that wasn't going to happen to them. They were very scared of breaking rules and somebody you know, doing

42:40 something to them. The participants also described something that I found so interesting, which is that in the cult, everything was made sense for them. Like they could rely on the cult for meaning, for order, for their daily routines, and then they lost that structure. And that made them feel very depressed, very hopeless. It was a spiritual crisis, it's a social crisis, and then it's a physical crisis of like, what do I do with my days and what do I believe in? It's interesting because some researchers are very quick to say that people think entering a cult is the hardest and most disruptive part of this whole process. And it's not. It's the six months after leaving where someone has to process everything that's happened to them.

43:28 And they are also... probably a little part of them is still mourning the good stuff and still mourning the relationship, I guess. As I said in the intro, all of this is important to know because cults are on the rise. They are increasing significantly if you look at the data. Because the world is becoming more unstable, during times like this, more people will go out looking for an ideological center.

43:56 And in the current climate we're in, misinformation and that ideological misinformation reaches them a lot quicker. I think we're going to be seeing more and more of this deprogramming happening for more and more people who seem relatively normal. Cults are on the rise. Literally in this research, I was like, I was like, I'm going to see if I can find a cult. I'm just going to see what I can find. I found three active cults with Instagram pages and TikTok accounts. One of them had young members posting lifestyle content. And that is content that you or I could very easily consume and could very easily encounter.

44:31 That is a cult recruiting through TikTok. So what are some of the new age cults that we need to be on the lookout for? I'm talking about cults that may not look like the Manson cult or the Heaven's Gate cult or what we have in mind when we think of compounds and secret camps and Kool-Aid. These cults are a lot more sinister. I want to present three of the biggest ones of our day and age. I want to see if you guys have encountered them. You've definitely encountered at least one. Stay with us. We're going to talk about it right after this short break. So as I said, culture on the rise, sorry to scare you.

45:12 It's true though. And that's because a big trigger, as I said, for these kinds of groups to emerge is periods of instability and periods of fear. And a big moment like that happened in recent history that sociologists have said acted as a major catalyst for the formation of thousands of new cults. And that thing was the pandemic.

45:34 The pandemic was a perfect storm of fear, misinformation, loneliness, conspiracies about the government, a search for meaning and a search for freedom, like all kind of rolled into one. And it happened to so many people. One of the biggest cults to come out of this was the sovereign citizens movement. I know in Australia, in Canada, New Zealand, Germany, membership in these groups skyrocketed. If you haven't heard of the sovereign citizens, they're essentially people who are deeply anti-government, but to an extreme degree. And they really believe that you shouldn't have to pay tax. You shouldn't have to follow certain laws. You shouldn't be subject to any kind of governmental authority. There is a massive, sovereign citizen compound

46:24 or like I guess it's a hideout in rural Australia and there was a huge case last year involving a member of this sovereign citizens movement who shot and killed two police officers and if you're Australian you'll know this case his name is Desi Freeman if you want to look it up it was all over the news but the thing like obviously it's shocking when that happens but it made quite a stir because a lot of people in that community were like oh We had no idea.

46:51 We had no idea these people were just like around the corner. So sovereign citizen cults on the rise. Doomsday cults are another one that are on the rise, which honestly, I kind of get it. I kind of get it. It's hard to not feel like end times are upon us if you read the news. But perhaps one of the most famous cults on earth at the moment is the so-called cult of Trump. Some cult experts, mind control experts argue that Trump fits the definition of a cult leader through his promotion of, well, because he is a cult of personality, they point to his followers like intense devotion to him, his creation of an us versus them narrative, the use of truth social to spread a single truth about the world based on his views to his followers.

47:40 He demands absolute loyalty. If you don't, if you're not loyal, you face ostracization, you face shame, you face maybe even violence. Some people call it political populism. Others say it is so much more dangerous than that. I guess it's the same sentiment if I'm thinking about it as like one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist. One person's cult, we might call the cult of Trump a cult, but that's another person's political beliefs. And it's another person's, I don't know, it's another person's religion. There are also wellness groups which have come under fire for being cults. I have to mention that. It's a wellness podcast. I have to talk about them. For example, the Universal Medicine cult,

48:25 the One Taste cult, which promoted orgasmic collective meditation. You heard that right. Modern wellness cults often use social media to lure people in because they market self-improvement solutions and life coaching sessions and group programs and that make people feel seen and bring them into the fold. And then they offer alternative practices. Then they offer packages you can buy with money. There's often a guru who asks for unquestioning trust. They claim to possess exclusive secrets to health, to wealth, to enlightenment. And then that money component is critical because money, that is what feeds the cult. There is this financial aspect that is truly the main intention.

49:14 of this group, they're offering these new age health practices that promise big things, that ask you to cut off toxic family members, that ask you to do all this stuff. And it's only going to cost you all your life savings. And these people get into serious trouble and they really do end up harming themselves. think the only approach to people who find themselves in these groups is just unconditional empathy, not the people who start them, the people who find themselves in them. And I know this sounds controversial to say that, but I think we really have to understand and try and be empathetic of the fear and the desperation that drives people into these misinformation spaces. No one willingly wants to feel so petrified of the world around

50:01 them that they part with their distance themselves from their family, become only more isolated and scared. I have friends whose parents have been basically taken from them by online misinformation groups that we could call cults. It's devastating. I think when you see it up close, you truly do understand how much fear is at the heart of all this and how much desperation and hopelessness that was created by the pandemic and by all these other movements that happened at the same time. Again, it returns to one of my main points I've been making over and over again.

50:41 The way the cults are depicted makes them seem like this rare standout thing that we can gawk at and we can watch a two-hour documentary and think that's not normal. How stupid must you be to have joined that? But actually, it's basic human psychology that gets people involved. And it's basic human psychology that's just been manipulated in a certain direction.

51:04 And we're fascinated by it. This is the final thing I want to touch on for this episode. We've examined cult leaders. We've examined cult followers. We've put the spotlight on them. What about us? Let's turn the attention back to us. What is the psychology behind why we find cults so fascinating and I guess, as viewers. So I've been thinking about this a lot. I think cults offer a fascinating clash between our intrinsic human desire to belong and the terrifying allure of absolute control from the cult leader.

51:42 I think when we watch documentaries like this, we kind of all ask ourselves that question, which is like, could that have happened to me? There was this New York Times piece written last year that also talks about the fact that cults are compelling because it shows us that we are much more pliable and much more gullible than we think we are. There is a human vulnerability there that we recognize in ourselves. We don't want to admit it, but we do. Also, I think cults contain almost everything that humans find psychologically irresistible to look at. They contain sex, power, belonging, charismatic personalities, secrecy, rebellion, money, danger. There is something voyeuristic about watching people fall into that without knowing and watch

52:34 them surrender their individuality to a leader because there is this danger. There is this danger and there is this excitement about watching that, that we kind of forget these are real people. These are real people. This happened to them. Finally, I think the reason we're so obsessed with cults is the train wreck effect. This is something I read about in an article by the author Kristen Aliyah. She teaches at Brown University and she speaks about how watching a cult collapse is like watching or seeing a car accident and just needing to take a look. It gives us the safety of observing extreme human behavior that's fascinating or extreme human suffering that's fascinating from a distance. and not

53:23 actually being harmed by it. It's so novel because we don't think it's going to happen to us. We hope we don't experience it. And we want to see it from the safety of our homes and from behind closed doors. We want to see how those decisions are made. We want to see how ordinary humans can be driven to do terrible things or join terrible things. A big part of this is is also the cult leaders themselves. They are fascinating because power is fascinating. Charisma, no matter how terribly it's used, is magnetic and it's intriguing to us as humans. Charles Manson, Jim Jones, they fascinate us because what an insane ability to make people do such awful things.

54:13 And part of us just wants to know how. It all comes back to our desire to understand our own human nature just a little bit more. And that, my friends, is the psychology of cults. That's why we find them so fascinating. So before we end this episode, let me do a quick summary of what we've covered because we have discussed so much. We discussed how cults form, the personality types of cult leaders, what distinguishes a cult from a religion or Taylor Swift from a cult, what makes people vulnerable to to joining a cult, what makes them difficult to leave, and the anatomy of modern day cults like the cult of Donald Trump or sovereign citizens. And of course, we examined our own relationship to cults and

54:59 why we can't look away, why we can't help but stare and ponder. So thank you for listening. If you have made it all the way to the end, I hope you learned something. And if you are listening on Spotify, leave a comment down below. What do you think is a modern day cult? Mine is trad wives. I think trad wives is a modern day cult movement. Controversial, I know, but I just believe it. So leave a comment down below what is yours. Make sure that you watch an episode on Netflix if you haven't yet. That would be very, very helpful. You can also follow us on Instagram at thatpsychologypodcast.

55:41 Thank you as always to our researcher for this episode, Lucy Davidson. There are heaps of other pieces of research in the description of this episode if you want to go even further. There's also a link to our sub stack where we put shorter transcript versions of these episodes in reading format that we send to your email. So if you like to read whilst you listen, that is a great way to do it. I think that's all my little reminders. I just hope you enjoyed this episode.

56:07 I need a big glass of water after all that research. So I hope it was worth it. And until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.