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
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
