Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005, Page 100
Under normal circumstances, it is not easy to get people to disown their core convictions.
Convictions, once developed, are generally treated not as hypotheses to test empirically but
as possessions to value and cherish. There are often substantial subjective costs to the
individual in giving them up. Abelson has provided convincing linguistic evidence that most
people treat convictions more as valued possessions than as ways of testing reality.
Cognitive dissonance theory predicts with accuracy that, when subject to frontal attack,
attachment to convictions tends to harden. Therefore, a frontal attack on convictions,
without first undermining the self-image foundation of these convictions, is doomed to
failure. An indirect approach through brainwashing is often more effective.
The unconventional beliefs that individuals adopt when they join cults will come to be
discontinuous with the beliefs they held in pre-cult life. What appears to happen is a
transformation from individually held to collectively held convictions. This is a well known
phenomenon that Janis has called ―groupthink.‖ Under circumstances of groupthink, the
specific content of one‘s convictions becomes much less important than achieving the goal
that all in the group hold the same convictions. In elaboration likelihood terms we can say
that the subject undergoes a profound shift from message processing to source processing
in the course of resocialization.
When the state of hyper credulity is achieved, it leaves the individual strongly committed to
the charismatic belief of the moment but with little or no critical inclination to resist
charismatically approved new or contradictory beliefs in the future and little motivation to
attempt to form accurate independent judgments of the consequences of assuming new
beliefs. The cognitive track of the resocialization process begins by stripping away the old
convictions and associating them with guilt, evil, or befuddlement. Next, there is a
traumatic exhaustion of the habit of subjecting right-brain convictions to left-brain rational
scrutiny. This goes along with an increase in what Snyder has called self-monitoring,
implying a shift from central route to peripheral route processing of information in which the
source rather than the content of the message becomes all important.
H4. As an individual goes through the brainwashing process, there will be an increase in
relational enmeshment with measurable increases with completion of each of the three
stages. The purging of convictions is a painful process and it is reasonable to ask why
anybody would go through it voluntarily. The payoff is the opportunity to feel more
connected with the charismatic relational network. These people have also been through it
and only they really understand what you are going through. So cognitive purging leads one
to seek relational comfort and this comfort becomes enmeshing. The credulity process and
the enmeshing process depend on each other.
The next three hypotheses are concerned with the fact that each of the three phases of
brainwashing achieves plateaus in both of these processes. The stripping phase creates the
vulnerability to this sort of transformation. The identification phase creates realignment, and
the rebirth phase breaks down the barrier between the two so that convictions can be
emotionally energized and held with zeal while emotional attachments can be sacralized in
terms of the charismatic ideology. The full brainwashing model actually provides far more
detailed hypotheses concerning the various steps within each phase of the process. Space
constraints make it impossible to discuss these here. An adequate technical discussion, for
example, of the manipulation of language in brainwashing would require a chapter at least
the length of this one.
H5. The stripping phase: The cognitive goal of the stripping phase is to destroy prior
convictions and prior relationships of belonging. The emotional goal of the stripping phase is
to create the need for attachments. Overall, at the completion of the stripping phase, the
situation is such that the individual is hungry for convictions and attachments and

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005, Page 101
dependent upon the collectivity to supply them. This sort of credulity and attachment
behavior is widespread among prisoners and hospital patients.
H6. The identification phase: The cognitive goal of the identification phase is to establish
imitative search for conviction and bring about the erosion of the habit of incredulity. The
emotional goal of the identification phase is to instill the habit of acting out through
attachment. Overall, at the completion of the identification phase, the individual has begun
the practice of relying on the collectivity for beliefs and for a cyclic emotional pattern of
arousal and comfort. But, at this point, this reliance is just one highly valued form of
existence. It is not yet viewed as an existential necessity.
H7. The symbolic death and rebirth phase: In the rebirth phase, the cognitive and the
emotional tracks come together and mutually support each other. This often gives the
individual a sense of having emerged from a tunnel and an experience of spiritual rebirth.
The cognitive goal of the rebirth phase is to establish a sense of ownership of (and pride of
ownership in) the new convictions. The emotional goal of the rebirth phase is to make a full
commitment to the new self that is no longer directly dependent upon hope of attachment
or fear of separation. Overall, at the completion of the rebirth phase, we may say that the
person has become a fully deployable agent of the charismatic leader. The brainwashing
process is complete.
H8 states that the brainwashing process results in a state of subjectively elevated exit
costs. These exit costs cannot, of course, be observed directly. But they can be inferred
from the behavioral state of panic or terror that arises in the individual at the possibility of
having his or her ties to the group discontinued. The cognitive and emotional states
produced by the brainwashing process together bring about a situation in which the
perceived exit costs for the individual increase sharply. This closes the trap for all but the
most highly motivated individuals and induces in many a state of uncritical obedience. As
soon as exit from the group (or even from its good graces) ceases to be a subjectively
palatable option, it makes sense for the individual to comply with almost anything the group
demands—even to the point of suicide in some instances. Borrowing from Sartre‘s insightful
play of that name, I refer to this situation as the ―no exit‖ syndrome. When demands for
compliance are particularly harsh, the hyper credulity aspect of the process sweetens the
pill somewhat by allowing the individual to accept uncritically the justifications offered by
the charismatic leader and/or charismatic organization for making these demands, however
farfetched these justifications might appear to an outside observer.
H9 states that the brainwashing process results in a state of ideological obedience in which
the individual has a strong tendency to comply with any behavioral demands made by the
collectivity, especially if motivated by the carrot of approval and the stick of threatened
expulsion, no matter how life threatening these demands may be and no matter how
repugnant such demands might have been to the individual in his or her pre-brainwashed
state.
H10 states that the brainwashing process results in increased deployability. Deployability
extends the range of ideological obedience in the temporal dimension. It states that the
response continues after the stimulus is removed. This hypothesis will be disconfirmed in
any cult within which members are uncritically obedient only while they are being
brainwashed but not thereafter. The effect need not be permanent, but it does need to
result in some measurable increase in deployability over time.
H11 states that the ability of the collectivity to rely on obedience without surveillance will
result in a measurable decrease in surveillance. Since surveillance involves costs, this
decrease will lead to a quantity S, where S equals the savings to the collectivity due to
diminished surveillance needs and should be measurable at least to an ordinal level.