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NancyLebovitz comments on New study on choice blindness in moral positions - Less Wrong
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It works. Especially if you can get people away from their other social contacts. Mix in insufficient sleep and a low protein diet, and it works really well. (Second-hand information, but there's pretty good consensus on how cults work.)
How do you think cults work?
I'd question "really well". Cult retention rates tend to be really low -- about 2% for Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church ("Moonies") over three to five years, for example, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% for Scientology. The cult methodology seems to work well in the short term and on vulnerable people, but it seriously lacks staying power: one reason why many cults focus so heavily on recruiting, as they need to recruit massively just to keep up their numbers.
Judging from the statistics here, retention rates for conventional religious conversions are much higher than this (albeit lower than retention rates for those raised in the church).
I guess "really well" is ill-defined, but I do think that both Sun Myung Moon and L. Ron Hubbard could say "It's a living".
You can get a lot out of people in the three to five years before they leave.
Note that the term cult is a worst argument in the world (guilt by association). The neutral term is NRM. Thus to classify something as a cult one should first tick off the "religious" check mark, which requires spirituality, a rather nebulous concept:
If you define cult as an NRM with negative connotations, then you have to agree on what those negatives are, not an easy task.
"NRM" is a term in the sociology of religion. There are many groups that are often thought of as "cultish" in the ordinary-language sense that are not particularly spiritual. Multi-level marketing groups and large group awareness training come to mind.
This is basically true, although I had a dickens of a time finding specifics in the religious/psychology/sociological research - everyone is happy to claim that cults have horrible retention rates, but none of them seem to present much beyond anecdotes.
I'll confess I was using remembered statistics for the Moonies, not fresh ones. The data I remember from a couple of years ago seems to have been rendered unGooglable by the news of Sun Myung Moon's death.
Scientology is easier to find fresh statistics for, but harder to find consistent statistics for. I personally suspect the correct value is lower, but 10% is about the median in easily accessible sources.
Click on “Search tools” at the bottom of the menu on the left side of Google's search results page, then on “Custom range”.
Like what you say but not much like ChristianKI said. I think he was exaggerating rather a lot to try to make something fit when it doesn't particularly.