Leading by Feel - Watch Your Culture

August 7, 2007

by: Janja Lalich

Cult leaders don’t do anything mysterious; they just know how to package themselves and their promises well and how to target responsive audiences. They’re very good at influencing, or, to be more precise, manipulating, followers. To do this, they rely on a keen ability to perceive others’ vulnerabilities and longings – to know what people want.

One way a cult leader manipulates is by exploiting followers’ eagerness to be part of something bigger than themselves. That desire often prompts followers to assign to a leader attributes that he doesn’t actually possess. A type of group contagion can take hold–a “truebelieverism” mentality. Then followers can fall into what I call uncritical obedience, never questioning the leader’s claims. When followers give a leader this power, there are obvious dangers.

Cult leaders are also skillful at convincing followers that the leader’s ideas are their own. Once followers own the ideas, it’s difficult for them to extricate themselves from the leader’s message. For example, a leader may exaggerate his own importance. In the 1980s, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a wildly popular Oregon-based Eastern guru, always surrounded himself with armed guards. That heightened sense of need for security led some of his followers to perform dangerous, antisocial activities in their desire to protect and defend their ashram and Rajneesh himself.

The differences between how cult leaders and conventional leaders influence their followers can be subtle.

Cult leaders also make it difficult for people to leave. They set up interlocking systems of influence and control that keep followers obedient and prevent them from thinking about their own needs. Cult leaders may offer “rewards”–
sometimes material,more often ephemeral – that keep followers committed to the leader and to the organization’s goals. The differences between how a conventional leader influences followers and how cult leaders manipulate
them can be subtle. Sometimes the only difference is their intent. And sometimes there is no difference.

Janja Lalich is an assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Chico, and an expert on cults.

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