Joining breaks down into small "yeses"
No one agrees to join a cult. They agree to come to a free course, stay for dinner, spend a weekend with new acquaintances who, for some reason, are especially delighted by you. They may not mention the teachings at all in the first few weeks: first they offer attention and belonging; the explanation of the world comes later.
Then each step is slightly bigger than the last and seems logical on its own: give up your Saturdays, take on a responsibility, move closer, see your old friends less often - they don't understand anyway. Psychologists call this the principle of consistency: after taking a small step, a person explains it to herself as her own choice, and the next one comes more easily. In this chain, there simply is no moment when "I joined."
- Course
- Dinner
- Responsibilities
- Move
After a year or two, the chain has done its work: almost everyone close to you is inside, the group sets your daily schedule, and sometimes your job and housing are there too.
Leaving takes one "no" - and the full price at once
Leaving means losing your social circle, routine, role, and answer to why any of it mattered in a single day. Joining was spread over months and broken into dozens of harmless agreements. Leaving presents the whole bill at once.
There are 2 more layers to this. In some groups, someone who leaves is considered a traitor: former friends stop speaking to her, sometimes relatives do too - so the cost of leaving includes family. And the more years you've invested, the more painful it is to admit they were invested for nothing. Doubt also comes with a ready-made explanation: "a test," "pride," "outside influences." Psychiatrist Robert Lifton described such formulas as thought-terminating clichés: words that close down thought instead of opening it up.
It doesn't get easier right away
The door is not locked, though. Sociologist Eileen Barker, who observed one new religious movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s, found that most people who joined that group left on their own within the first year or two - without rescuers or kidnappings. But it rarely feels like freedom: along with the group, your routine, social circle, and clear picture of the world disappear, and for a while there is emptiness in their place.
Most often, what comes right after leaving is not relief but numbness: the decision is made, but a life in place of the old one has not yet been put together.
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Sources
- Robert Lifton, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" (1961) - on language that closes down thought
- Eileen Barker, "The Making of a Moonie" (1984) - on how many people left on their own
- the principle of consistency is described by Robert Cialdini