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participation, or charity work) soon after a brief period of fear. In accord with this
argument, they attributed this ―fear, then relief‖ compliance procedure to the depletion of
attentional capacity that is thought by many to occur soon after a person experiences
strong emotion (e.g., Cohen, 1978).
Interactive Dynamics During Internalization
Arousal, capacity, and superficial message processing. The change in private beliefs
that occurs during the internalization stage is hypothesized to be affected by the amount of
attentional capacity available to individuals during intense indoctrination. Persuasion
researchers agree that one way of resisting a flawed persuasive attempt is to carefully
evaluate the merits of the message. In cases of indoctrination, individuals are often cajoled
into violating their values, engaging in costly behaviors, or committing themselves to
irrevocable decisions in service of fanciful, paranoid and unverifiable doctrines. For example,
the members of the SLA committed a variety of very public criminal actions, convinced that
they were at the brink of triggering and leading a mass ―people‘s revolution‖ across the
United States. One would think that careful processing of such teachings would draw
attention to faulty logic, incomplete verification, undiscussed consequences, or erroneous
information. However, careful, systematic processing requires a good deal of effort and
concentration (Chaiken, 1987 Petty &Cacioppo, 1986). People who are debilitated because
of malnourishment, sleep deprivation, or overwork should be less capable of carefully
processing message characteristics. This, in turn, should heighten the impact of peripheral
cues such as audience response, speaker confidence, or emotional manipulations. In short,
the fact that a variety of indoctrination procedures deplete attentional capacity may explain
why individuals in such settings so often appear to accept even fanciful aspects of group
doctrine with such little critical objection.2
A variety of findings indicate that this attentional capacity prediction has validity. It is
congruent with research that documents that distraction and time pressure produce less
careful message processing (e.g., Baron, Baron, &Miller, 1973 Kruglanski, 1989). The
strong arousal generated during intense indoctrination represents another factor that may
increase the likelihood of heuristic processing. A number of writers have reviewed evidence
showing that emotional arousal depletes attentional capacity (e.g., Eysenck, 1977). Given
that careful message processing is presumed to occur only when one has the necessary
capacity and motivation, Baron (1986) argued that if arousal lowers such capacity, it should
decrease the likelihood of elaborate message processing (see Bodenhausen, Sheppard, &
Kramer, 1994, for a related view).
This argument, in fact, echoes early theorizing by Sargant (1957), who argued on the basis
of anthropological and historical observations, that emotional excitement somehow
disrupted critical thinking and caused the ultraparadoxical reversal of previously conditioned
preferences referred to earlier. More interesting, Sargant suspected these effects were
caused by some disturbance of cerebral function. He presciently suggested that a form of
cortical reciprocal inhibition (pp. 43, 55) may be involved, a position espoused some 16
years later by Walley and Weiden (1973).
Until recently there was not a great deal of data relevant to the idea that strong emotion
would heighten superficial message processing, but in the last few years a number of
studies have reported support for this view. Sanbonmatsu and Kardes (1988) reported that
a step exercise (arousal) manipulation increased responsiveness to peripheral cues while
decreasing audience responsiveness to message quality differences. This pattern, of course,
is typically associated with superficial (i.e., peripheral) processing of message content.
Although Sanbonmatsu and Kardes did not use an emotion manipulation, Gleicher and Petty
(1992) varied moderate fear by warning students about either a new illness on campus or
campus crime. They found that when peripheral cues were easily available to participants,

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 18, 2001, Page 121
these fear manipulations decreased the audience‘s sensitivity to message quality
differences, thereby again showing evidence of superficial message processing. Baron,
Inman, Kao, and Logan (1992) reported a similar finding using a more naturalistic
emotional manipulation.
In laboratory tests, it is hard to provoke strong levels of fear given that participants are free
to terminate their participation and, moreover, are generally under the (correct) impression
that strong stressors are unlikely to be used in modern psychological research. To develop a
nonlaboratory alternative, Baron, Inman, et al. (1992) manipulated emotional arousal in a
student dental clinic. In this setting, patients regularly received a complete description of
their upcoming dental treatment. In this study, some dental patients were randomly
assigned to receive this graphic description just minutes before hearing a message. These
―high-fear‖ patients were more persuaded by a purposely flawed message (accompanied by
an enthusiastic audience response) than were patients who did not receive this stressful
description until after reacting to the message. Thus, fear led to less careful message
processing in this study.
Moreover, fear is not the only emotion to provoke ―low-effort‖ message processing.
Bodenhausen et al. (1994) found that an anger manipulation heightened an audience‘s
responsiveness to peripheral message cues. In addition, this effect did not occur when a
nonarousing emotion (sadness) was manipulated. In short, a number of studies indicate
that arousing emotions tend to decrease the effort people employ when processing
persuasive content. Given the strong emotional arousal frequently present during the typical
instance of intense indoctrination, these results imply that indoctrinees are not likely to
engage in very careful processing of the persuasive manipulations they are exposed to.
Moreover, any resulting attitude change may be enhanced if the message or doctrine
suggests a means to control the threat or danger used to trigger the emotion. This is
particularly true in cases in which the persuasive messages used by the indoctrinating group
suggest simple (i.e., attainable) avenues of threat reduction. As Rogers (1975) pointed out,
under these conditions fear-based persuasive appeals are particularly effective at inducing
attitude change.3 Such appeals are indeed common in charismatic groups in which
adherence to doctrine and loyalty to the group are proffered as means of avoiding the
various threats and dangers made salient (e.g., Sargant, 1957 Singer, 1995).
One objection to this discussion of overload and superficial message processing is that, in
theory, attitudes formed on the basis of superficial processing are less stable and less
resistant to counterpropaganda than are attitudes formed or changed through more effortful
processing (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), Although there is emerging laboratory support for
these predictions (Eagly &Chaiken, 1993), these laboratory studies do not reproduce the
situation created by intense indoctrination in which the target of persuasion remains in a
controlled social setting after message exposure, surrounded by others who confirm and
reinforce the beliefs in question and in which social pressure is used to elicit a series of
behaviors congruent with the new beliefs. Moreover, in many indoctrination situations, the
target of persuasion remains socially dependent, sleep deprived, or otherwise debilitated
well into his or her indoctrination experience, thereby making a careful reevaluation of
doctrines and beliefs extremely difficult. Under these circumstances, it is expected that
attitudes and beliefs changed initially as a result of heuristic message processing will
become solidified, more extreme over time, integrated into other aspects of self and, as a
result, relatively impervious to change (see Maass &Clark, 1984, for very similar
reasoning).
Arousal, capacity, and conformity. Almost all accounts of intense indoctrination
acknowledge that conformity pressure is carefully applied in the typical case of intense
indoctrination (e.g., Galanter, 1989 Lifton, 1961, Singer, 1995). More important, however,
the procedures and states previously discussed are known to potentiate classic social