Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005, Page 90
X disputational relevant correct
This proposition is quite muddled. The theory doesn‘t need a testable criterion for
involuntary belief because it doesn‘t utilize a concept called ―involuntary belief‖ or anything
similar to it ditto for ―involuntary commitment to the new world view.‖ As in the previous
few propositions, Anthony is misusing the term falsifiability. This term applies only to
hypotheses and it is meaningless when applied to concepts. What he appears to mean is
that he thinks there are no operational criteria that an objective outside researcher can use
to determine whether exit costs have increased, decreased, or remained the same. But ―exit
cost‖ is an easy variable to operationalize. Exit cost is defined simply as the magnitude of
what it will cost to get a person to leave. If one year you ask, and the person says she will
leave for $10,000, and when you come back the next year, she says it will take $100,000 to
get her to leave, we can infer that exit costs have increased. When the subjective costs are
emotional and cannot be translated into vulgar dollar amounts, to measure such a change
might be more challenging. But, in principle, doing this is no more difficult than constructing
a test to determine whether a person‘s racial prejudice or his self-esteem have increased
from one year to the next—something that social psychologists routinely do.
Proposition 74. (Page 270f) According to Zablocki the exit costs idea depends upon his
finding that converts to totalistic new religious movements find it more difficult to leave
than they would if they had converted to other movements. This is the whole basis for his
―exit costs‖ reinterpretation of the brainwashing paradigm.... Moreover, according to
Zablocki, the brainwashed convert is aware that he wants to leave the ―socio-psychological
prison, but is unable to do so in very much in the same way as someone who is addicted to
drugs or other undesirable habits.‖ But what is measurable about this feeling of being
trapped such that we could scientifically determine that converts to totalistic new religious
world views are more apt to have difficulty leaving their religion than are those committed
to other types of world views? ...It would seem that a minimum test of his theory would be
if Zablocki could show that totalism as an independent variable could differentially predict
the dependent variable of lower defection rates than in non-totalistic groups, particularly if
such lower turnover rates were combined with evidence that members consciously wanted
to leave but had great difficulty doing so while they were still members of the group.... In
Zablocki‘s only systematic discussion of this issue, he acknowledges that there is no
evidence that totalistic NRMs have a lower turnover rate than other new religions, and he
even contends that such differential rates of defection are irrelevant to testing his exit costs
hypothesis.
X disputational X relevant correct
Membership-turnover data is not appropriate for measuring exit costs. Many organizations
have high overall membership turnover along with a highly committed core membership
that is stable. Exit costs are an individual-level phenomenon and must be measured at the
individual level. When exit costs are objective (money, for example) one can measure them
simply by determining the level of bribe necessary to get the person to leave. When exit
costs are more subjective, they present precisely the same measurement challenges as
those faced by individual who would measure any social-psychological phenomenon.
Anthony has not demonstrated why a questionnaire that can measure authoritarianism or
self-esteem cannot also measure subjective exit costs. Once exit costs are measured, only a
simple statistical procedure is required to determine whether those costs tend to increase
for a person who has gone through the twelve persuasion stages discussed above. If E
stands for exit cost, the problem is whether E after brainwashing is significantly greater
than E before brainwashing. This design corresponds to the simplest quasi-experimental
design. If the researcher wishes to control for spuriousness by examining covariates, the
design becomes a little more complex, but it is still straightforward.
X disputational relevant correct
This proposition is quite muddled. The theory doesn‘t need a testable criterion for
involuntary belief because it doesn‘t utilize a concept called ―involuntary belief‖ or anything
similar to it ditto for ―involuntary commitment to the new world view.‖ As in the previous
few propositions, Anthony is misusing the term falsifiability. This term applies only to
hypotheses and it is meaningless when applied to concepts. What he appears to mean is
that he thinks there are no operational criteria that an objective outside researcher can use
to determine whether exit costs have increased, decreased, or remained the same. But ―exit
cost‖ is an easy variable to operationalize. Exit cost is defined simply as the magnitude of
what it will cost to get a person to leave. If one year you ask, and the person says she will
leave for $10,000, and when you come back the next year, she says it will take $100,000 to
get her to leave, we can infer that exit costs have increased. When the subjective costs are
emotional and cannot be translated into vulgar dollar amounts, to measure such a change
might be more challenging. But, in principle, doing this is no more difficult than constructing
a test to determine whether a person‘s racial prejudice or his self-esteem have increased
from one year to the next—something that social psychologists routinely do.
Proposition 74. (Page 270f) According to Zablocki the exit costs idea depends upon his
finding that converts to totalistic new religious movements find it more difficult to leave
than they would if they had converted to other movements. This is the whole basis for his
―exit costs‖ reinterpretation of the brainwashing paradigm.... Moreover, according to
Zablocki, the brainwashed convert is aware that he wants to leave the ―socio-psychological
prison, but is unable to do so in very much in the same way as someone who is addicted to
drugs or other undesirable habits.‖ But what is measurable about this feeling of being
trapped such that we could scientifically determine that converts to totalistic new religious
world views are more apt to have difficulty leaving their religion than are those committed
to other types of world views? ...It would seem that a minimum test of his theory would be
if Zablocki could show that totalism as an independent variable could differentially predict
the dependent variable of lower defection rates than in non-totalistic groups, particularly if
such lower turnover rates were combined with evidence that members consciously wanted
to leave but had great difficulty doing so while they were still members of the group.... In
Zablocki‘s only systematic discussion of this issue, he acknowledges that there is no
evidence that totalistic NRMs have a lower turnover rate than other new religions, and he
even contends that such differential rates of defection are irrelevant to testing his exit costs
hypothesis.
X disputational X relevant correct
Membership-turnover data is not appropriate for measuring exit costs. Many organizations
have high overall membership turnover along with a highly committed core membership
that is stable. Exit costs are an individual-level phenomenon and must be measured at the
individual level. When exit costs are objective (money, for example) one can measure them
simply by determining the level of bribe necessary to get the person to leave. When exit
costs are more subjective, they present precisely the same measurement challenges as
those faced by individual who would measure any social-psychological phenomenon.
Anthony has not demonstrated why a questionnaire that can measure authoritarianism or
self-esteem cannot also measure subjective exit costs. Once exit costs are measured, only a
simple statistical procedure is required to determine whether those costs tend to increase
for a person who has gone through the twelve persuasion stages discussed above. If E
stands for exit cost, the problem is whether E after brainwashing is significantly greater
than E before brainwashing. This design corresponds to the simplest quasi-experimental
design. If the researcher wishes to control for spuriousness by examining covariates, the
design becomes a little more complex, but it is still straightforward.
