SIO257: The Psychology Behind Cults, Part 2!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: And welcome to serious inquiries only. This is episode 257. I'm Thomas and this is part two about cults with Lindsey Osterman. What makes them work? Why do people choose to go into them? Why did they stay in and is QAnon a cult? Is Trumpism a cult all those questions and more today so why don't we just get right over to it. Here is part 2. Make sure you've caught part 1 which was last episode before you listen to this. All right here we go.

0:01:05 Lindsey: Yeah, I'm so yeah, so I was just, uh, so they, that was the first hook for Sarah, right? She, she shouldn't have kept coming back, but she talked to Mark and he was like, yeah, just stick it out, you've already paid the money, you're already there, just stick around she was like

0:01:16 Thomas: Well, and think about too, sorry to cut in, but like how I think that preys upon people who are probably have less, you know, because like, say you're wealthy and you pay $3,000 or something and you're like, well, this is clearly bullshit, whatever. But what if that $3 thousand was like incredibly hard to come by and you are a struggling actor or whatever you might be, I think that psychologically it's probably even more pressure to make it into something and to not feel like horrible that you wasted this hard-earned, you know, very needed money that you have. Whereas if you're some wealthy person, you're like, yeah, whoops, blew $3,000. Oh, well, whoopsy. I thought they were like kind of behind it, though. That's what I didn't get. I don't know. So there's more to this, and it might be like how Scientology has one face that they show to you or I and another that they showed to Tom Cruise. And they so it could be like that kind of thing.

0:01:17 Lindsey: Yes, yeah yeah yeah and And yet it did also work on the the Seagram's heirs.

0:02:10 Lindsey: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. That's true. They, they might not have entered through, through the ESP seminars. That's probably for somebody else, but yeah. I mean, the thing that you're talking about, I mean Sarah like explicitly says that she Was like, it felt ridiculous to pay that much money. I was, you know, living in a basement apartment or whatever. So yeah, that probably made it a lot more powerful for her. So, yeah. So I think that sunk cost, at least in the experience that she had, was a big part of what got her to stay for like the full first five day is what they called that. But then you have to convince people to keep coming back, right? Sunk cost is not going to get you all the way through this.

0:02:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. OK.

0:02:48 Lindsey: And so this is where I thought it might be fun to talk about cognitive dissonance a little bit. Shout out to Tom and Cecil. So I don't, is cognitive dissonance theory like part of the zeitgeist? Is that out there?

0:02:54 Thomas: Yeah. I'm not a good judge of that. Go ahead and pretend it's not. We all need to learn more.

0:03:03 Lindsey: Okay. Not a zeitgeisty. Okay. True. So cognitive dissonance theory is based on a real simple premise, and it's just that we don't like inconsistency. So if we have like two beliefs that conflict with each other, or we do something that's inconsistent with a belief, we're likely to feel bad about that and want to do something to resolve that inconsistency and make the bad feelings go away. So for example, in Sarah's case, I am not the kind of person who pays $3,000 for a really crappy self-help seminar. That would be be dissonant for her. And that inconsistency is likely to feel bad. And she's got a couple of options in terms of how to reduce that dissonance. So she could change her belief about herself. She could say, maybe I'm the kind of person who pays $3,000 for shitty self-help seminars, which is not likely the option that's going to be.

0:03:15 Thomas: Right. Right.

0:03:56 Thomas: Yeah, that would be like the Android thing to do, like data or somebody, you know, you'd just be like, oh, whoops, looks like I'm this kind of person. But humans don't do that.

0:04:06 Lindsey: Yep. Not usually. Usually that's going to be the harder path to take. So another option is to convince yourself that, like, maybe this actually isn't that shitty, and so that's what can get you beyond, like, just that initial sunk cost and into something else. So cognitive dissonance has been used to explain, like, a whole bunch of different effects, but the one that I think is most relevant here is called effort justification, and this was originally proposed to explain why groups that use hazing often have, like, particularly dedicated memberships. Yeah, so I know, it so, yeah. But in, in the original study, I'm not going to get too into the details, but essentially what they did is they had people come in that ostensibly thought that they were, um, like, auditioning to be part of this discussion group, and in the ad they made it sound like really cool, like it's this discussion group about sex. And this was like run in the fifties or something, so we were all repressed.

But it turned out that the discussions were actually super boring. They were all about, like, insect reproduction, and it was terrible. But before people found out that the discussion group was actually super bored, they either went through a humiliating experience or not. And the people who went through the humiliating experiences were much more likely to report that they thought that the conversation was actually kind of interesting. The people who did

0:04:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:43 Thomas: God, I hate hazing.

0:05:30 Lindsey: Not go through that experience said that it was, it was terrible, and the worst, they, like, bottomed out the rating scales, um, and the people who went through the humiliating experience were likely to, like, sign up and say that they wanted to come back and join the discussion group. The other people did not. And so the idea, to bring it back to cognitive dissonance, is that what people are doing is, is saying, like, implicitly, right, this is not happening consciously necessarily, but they're like, I just went through this incredibly painful, humiliating experience. And now I've got this dissonance in listening to this conversation that's really, really boring, right? One, one way that you can reconcile that distance is to be like, ah, maybe this is actually kind of cool.

0:05:35 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. So

0:06:09 Lindsey: Maybe I like insects doing whatever it is they do. Um, no,

0:06:14 Thomas: On a scale of, uh, one to, uh, Freud, how solid is this particular theory, sorry? Freud to 10 is what I meant, sorry.

0:06:23 Lindsey: I mean, cognitive dissonance theory, cognitive distance theory still has, Yeah, Freud did that. That's good. It's still, it's, it doesn't seem to be like I, we could, we could talk at some point about, like, the specific methods that they've used to demonstrate that dissonance is actually what's behind these kinds of effects, but it's, it, that is solid. I'm willing to, to put in with that. So yeah, like, I think that you could apply this to that first experience that she has, maybe, like, she goes through this first couple of, like, really crappy, painful days, and then, like, they start to make the seminars, like, a little bit better, right. And so her perception of that could be even more elevated because of something like effort justification, but the much better example of this in Nexium is DOS.

0:06:26 Thomas: Yeah. I guess I was thinking, like, how BS is this. When I did the first scale, anyway, okay. Okay.

0:06:46 Thomas: Yeah. It makes sense. Dos So this is the, the crux of the matter, the, the secret, secret top secret society within the cult, which is interesting to be in a cult, but not in the, you know, you didn't get to the secret sex part, but anyway, yeah, they, they, uh, so there's, as, again, more spoilers, women only, women in the cults are you find out, part of a group that involves a, a ceremony, initiation, that is actually branding people, uh, which is pretty gruesome.

0:07:47 Lindsey: Absolutely right, and this is, this is, uh, only people who are, who have already sort of thrown in with ESP, so these are all people that are already super into it. Um, and then they're, they're sort of getting into this even deeper inner circle, um, and yeah, so they go through this, like, harrowing experience, they're branded, it's incredibly painful, it's traumatic to watch the other people going through this too, um, and I mean, as a result, I'd say that we, we can see some evidence in the documentary that a lot of these women are, I don't know, it's it seems like they're pretty invested at that point.

0:07:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:24 Thomas: Yeah, interesting.

0:08:25 Lindsey: And they talk about that experience as being like very powerful and empowering, and, you about the amazing experiences that they're having in this group after going through this experience. I mean, I it's a pretty horrific example of this, but I think it fits pretty well with this concept and where it came from historically with hazing.

0:08:47 Thomas: Didn't think about it, like, a, like a hazing. That makes sense, though. And then what fits right into that is, within this secret, uh, which again turns out to be more grooming for sex with Keith, I assume, assume, because everything, all roads lead to sex with Keith. Um, they, or Volleyball, yeah, that would be the track I was on. That's cool, um, they, so they form this hierarchy of, of, and this is, gosh, it's uncomfortably close to a lot of, now I think about it, sorority, fraternity stuff, where you have, like, the, oh, fraternity, uh, father, grandfather, I remember that, grandparent, there's lot, lot of that stuff. So they have that, where the women who recruit more slaves is what they're calling them. Uh, and what is the DOS? Is it something over some dominant something?

0:08:59 Lindsey: Absolutely. Or volleyball. Yeah, yeah.

0:09:38 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:09:38 Thomas: What is it?

0:09:39 Lindsey: It's like, it's Latin, but it's, I think it translates into something along the lines of like dominance over submission. They use, they say both things.

0:09:40 Thomas: Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. So, they have a, like, setup where there's masters and slaves and then you recruit, of course, yeah, you get essentially hazed, but then you recoup more people and then you get to do the hazing and Uh, yeah, which again, I, I will never understand it, I will ever understand it, but apparently it seems pretty common because fraternities do this crap all the time, and actually sororities have their own version of that too, but yeah, like Yeah, I never understand the thing where it's like, cool, so you go through a bunch of humiliating stupid crap, and then the plus side is then you gets to be the perpetrator of humiliated stupid crap. I've never, never gotten it. I'll never understand it as long as I live. Okay.

0:10:00 Lindsey: Yep.

0:10:13 Lindsey: Allegedly.

0:10:28 Lindsey: See, I, I think it's, I think it's more the effort justification thing. And you just, you want, I, I think that people recognize that part of their psychological experience, and the kinship that they feel in the group, is the result of going through this harrowing experience. And they genuinely feel like they want to pass that on to people. That's charitable, I think.

0:10:47 Thomas: Yeah. I, yeah, who know, or, or it's just people want to be kind of sadistic or something and like this gives them the opportunity to do that, I don't know,

0:10:58 Lindsey: That could be. I mean, I right.

0:10:59 Thomas: Like it gives them a status thing, like, it, because you go through your particular thing, you pay your dues, and then you get to, you know, have status and power over, or somebody else.

0:11:13 Lindsey: Yeah, no, I think that's true. And if I if I sounds like I'm being too charitable, it's probably because cause I feel like academia does kind of the same thing. So as an academic, it's making me feel a little bit guilty. Um, yeah, no.

0:11:22 Thomas: Yeah. I think it's, a I think you'd find this same dynamic in a lot of places, not that that means they're all evil cults or something, but like these, yeah, yeah

0:11:37 Lindsey: Um. But I think it, I think, it does point towards some sort of fundamental mechanism that's, that's operating here. Like these wouldn't be, uh, sustained practices, I don't think, unless they had some of the intended outcomes in terms of loyalty or or whatever. So I've got just like one, one more, like compliance type thing that I thought was fun. I think we mentioned earlier that you, when you come into ESP, you start with actually, you know, a pretty large amount of monetary investment, but they ramp that up over time. So monetary investment but also the self disclosure thing, right? So you start at one level with that, and then as you get deeper and deeper and deeper into the cult and, you know, eventually the women that got into DOS, that investment was ramped up significantly. So they paid more money, and then part of what they were doing in DOS was that collateral giving, right? Where they had to essentially give them blackmail material. And so this, too, is actually described by some classic compliance techniques that depend on this concept called perceptual assimilation.

0:11:47 Thomas: Yeah

0:12:40 Lindsey: So this just refers to the fact that like, so say you really want one thing from a person, if you just ask them for that thing, they might comply with that request, or they might not. But if you first ask them for something that's smaller, and get them to say yes to that, then that second thing, which is actually the thing that you wanted, doesn't seem as large of a request. And so people are more likely to say yes to it.

0:13:05 Thomas: Interesting. Oh.

0:13:06 Lindsey: Yeah. And so, like, you know, if you string two of these together, it's called the foot in the door technique. That's really closely connected with low balling, right, where you start with a slightly lower amount, and then actually, you're asking for just a little bit bigger amount. So both of those work because of perceptual assimilation. And if you strung a bunch of these together, if you start with lower requests, and then over time, you just ramp them up and ramp them up and ramp them up, you could get people to do some pretty crazy shit. And so this is a plug for, have you watched The Push, the, the Darren Brown special, that

0:13:39 Thomas: Shoot, no, I've watched one or two of the other ones, but I think I didn't watch that one yet. Okay.

0:13:46 Lindsey: Yeah, the big plug for that, that is incredible. It's, it's like, I actually make my social psych students watch it because it's such a good illustration of these different social psychological principles, but anyway, like, the whole premise of that is this idea of perceptual assimilation. You start people off with these small requests, then you big up to, you build up to bigger and bigger and bigger. And so essentially, right, like the way that these people in NXIVM are getting sucked in is like, is like very much through this kind of, of technique. You start with the two or $3,000 that it costs to go for the first seminar.

You start with disclosing these things that you're maybe uncomfortable with, or find painful, but you're willing to say them in front of a crowd. And then by the end of it, these women are doing things like signing over the deeds to their house and sending nude photos to their masters and things like that. If you had started with that, nobody would have done that. Um, so, like, I, I don't know, I think that part of the function of this was financial, but part of it psychologically was just getting people even more invested in the, the group, like.

0:13:48 Thomas: Oh. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:14:50 Thomas: I'm still, I'm still piecing together how I'm viewing this final, like, you know, the DOS thing, whatever the heck that is, because I, I mean, maybe I need to see the end result of it, but like, from, it seems like they went a little too far, and by that I mean there, there are components to it that I don't even really understand, like, it. We joke that all roads lead to sex with Keith, but honestly, I don't really know how much that's true. It seems like a lot of it also seems to be about Alice and Mac having power over women or something, because they're getting them to do all these things. And I think with now two people that we've seen through the documentary that we're in this, at least one, so there's one that had already had sex with Heath, I think, before this, right? And then There's Yeah.

0:14:59 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:15:44 Lindsey: That that sounds right.

0:15:46 Thomas: Like and then there's another that never had sex with Keith, and it was, was in, she was in this thing, but it seemed to be more about whoever her quote-unquote master was controlling her day-to-day, whatever. So, I don't know, I, it seems, it seems weird to me, I'm still not sure how I, how I think about all this, and

0:15:46 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:16:06 Lindsey: I mean, if I'm thinking from Keith's perspective, I'm not setting up this organization because I'm gonna have sex with every single one of these women, I'm I'm almost using it as like a screening mechanism to like if they're Yeah, and I mean, if you're willing to, if you are willing to come into a group like this, that has this sort of master-slave kind of dynamic built into it, you are more willing than a person who is not willing to be in that group to have sex with me. As Keith, that is. Not as me.

0:16:06 Thomas: Yeah, mm-hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. Cast a wide net. OK.

0:16:38 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:16:39 Lindsey: So, so yeah, so if he's, if he is starting with this pool and he, come on, you know that he's got to have access to like all the collateral that's coming in, right?

0:16:39 Thomas: For sure. Right. Yeah. And like the the the I mean, it's so evil on many levels, but like one of the particularly sucky things is they keep getting all these women in by saying it's a women's group. Like it's we're going to it's like it's almost a feminist thing. Like it'S a we're gonna together. We're going TO create this network of women and we're GOING to achieve all this stuff. And then you come to find out, well, okay, like, yeah, sure. Keith did. And, you know, you get like varying, you know, levels of information at first. It's like, well Keith gave us permission. Like that's first level.

0:16:48 Lindsey: Right, mm-hmm. Right.

0:17:20 Thomas: Like, well he gave us commission to use a few of the, you know, the NXIVM tools for this or whatever. And then it's like oh, well yeah, he kind of knows about the branding, you know, like you get different things and then finally come to find out. No, like he designed this and he was in charge of it. Shocker.

0:17:21 Lindsey: Yep.

0:17:34 Lindsey: He's The head Of it. Yeah, Uh, yeah, I think, I think he might have like actually written all the language about it too. Like it supposedly is written by the women leaders of the group, but I think that Keith wrote all that stuff.

0:17:46 Thomas: But it really, I'm, yeah Yeah. Again, I haven't gone through the whole thing. I'm curious to see the whole Allison Mack situation. I want to know more about what she was doing and all this, but yeah.

0:17:57 Lindsey: Okay, so, so far we've gotten recruitment and we've gotten like sort of the compliance mechanisms that they, they use to get people sucked in. And I think the last thing that's important here is to talk about how cults keep their members devoted and prevent them from defecting or becoming suspicious, um, because like we talked about earlier, I mean, Mark, all accounts, should have left way before he did, right? Like, from a third-party perspective, it's amazing, like, how long he stayed committed to the group after Bonnie left. After his wife left, you know what I mean?

0:18:34 Thomas: I guess we still haven't, you know, verified for sure what that time increment was. I didn't think it was as long as you were saying, so I could, but I could be wrong, but he was in the group for a long time, and I think that that sounds like he was trying to utilize these tools. And, and, you know, you talked about the fact that if a lot of these things are merely describing what might be cognitive behavioral therapy or whatever, some, you pretty, um, acknowledged useful things, but just in different words, then, you KNOW, maybe he's getting some benefit or maybe like you say, it's the, it'S the belonging you get that makes you feel like you have a benefit. So maybe he was getting something out of it and was in it for quite a while, for like 12 years or something.

0:18:42 Lindsey: No, you may be right about that, but, yeah.

0:19:06 Lindsey: Yeah, no, for sure. Sure. I mean, I think I think an important aspect of that is like because of the structures that are set up in NXIVM, it's like it's not just that they're a source of belonging. Like they've set up structures so that people's entire social networks were wrapped up in Nexium and And, you know, their entire careers. Right. So they're they're depending on this group for like literally everything at a certain point. Um, at least people that got to Mark and Sarah's level, I think we're definitely in that position.

0:19:38 Thomas: Yeah, that's the thing. I imagine You ratchet it up while you're going to talk about the techniques of keeping people in, but I imagine that there's going to be a big difference between the levels they're going go to to keep somebody who just took one of the classes in versus somebody who you got to the inner sanctum.

0:20:07 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and you can you can sort of think about these in stages too, it's like, you know, not everybody is going to get through to the point where, you know, they're ramping up their investments to the same level that the people in DOS are, but once they get to to that level, right, then like some of these other things start to become more and more applicable, I think, is how I would think about it. Um, so if I'm a, if I'm Keith, if I'm a cult leader, one of the things that I'm worried about is that people are going to start thinking critically.

0:20:34 Thomas: Okay.

0:20:40 Lindsey: I really don't want that, and so not just Keith, but most cults, in fact all of the ones I could find examples of, use these strategies to promote groupthink. Um, so they're using these strategies to like, uh, reward conformity, discourage dissent in the group, and to specifically reduce people's ability to think critically. And so some of the things that that pop out as you're watching the documentary are the fact that they were, that a lot of these members that got into a certain point were sleep deprived and, uh, in DOS especially, but it sounded like this was happening even even before they got to DOS, that, um, there was some starvation type things that were being encouraged.

0:21:26 Lindsey: I mean, you're, you're, uh, not about the starvation, but about the sleep deprivation. You're, You're a parent of two young kids. I mean do you think sleep deprivation has any, not.

0:21:24 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, I'm even worse on that. I can't do anything without sleeping. I'm like, there's my real weakness. I Can't even, I can even survive on like seven hours of sleep. I mean, I Can'T even do that. Oh.

0:21:46 Lindsey: No, I'm with you.

0:21:48 Thomas: I'll sign up for a cult at like six hours of sleep. Oh yeah, whatever. I'LL give you my house. I don't care. Just let me sleep in more. Yeah,

0:21:48 Lindsey: I'm such a baby. Yeah. No exactly. I made sleep deprivation has, has like incredibly power, you know, their individual differences, I think in terms of the the extent to which people can tolerate that.

0:22:02 Thomas: Yeah. What the hell? How are those people who are like, yeah, I think I slept like five, four hours or whatever. It doesn't matter.

0:22:07 Lindsey: Yeah, I don't know.

0:22:08 Thomas: I don't get it. I'm the opposite of that. That is my real. Okay. So that's where they'd get me. Volleyball and sleep deprivation.

0:22:08 Lindsey: But I, yeah. Mm-hmm. No, I think statistically, they say you need around eight, but I'm pretty sure that's bullshit. I think, I think that's just because everybody is sleep deprived. Think there's book about that, actually, I'll have to find what that was. I Think it's called sleep, actually. They're probably selling something. But anyway, so yeah, so sleep deprivation, starvation, right? Those Those are both physical needs that if they are not met, like have profound impacts on cognitive functioning.

0:22:21 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:22:43 Lindsey: And this is not like, this was something that we found out that NXIVM was actually building into their ideology that they were selling. And this was one of the things that Keith stole from Heaven's Gate. So like the whole thing with Heaven's gate is that you were supposed to deny your humanly needs in order to like level up.

0:22:43 Thomas: Okay, convenient.

0:23:03 Lindsey: And they said that explicitly in the documentary. And that, you know, the feeling of discomfort was something that you should try to push past. It was just a, you know, it's another one of those limiting belief things. You don't really need that much sleep. You don't really need to eat that much. Yeah, I know, right? But yeah, so a lot of cults use techniques exactly like that to try to reduce critical thinking. And then on another side of this, they also use um like strict enforcement of group norms to encourage conformity, um, and so if people express any doubts about the group or dissent, they're often shunned, um, and people like come back on them really hard. And you see this happening with uh Keith and what's the, what's the woman's name?

0:23:47 Thomas: Yeah. What the heck? We haven't even talked about her. The one that was on the power suit.

0:23:47 Lindsey: Yeah. Nancy. Yeah. Nancey, the power suit. Um, they constantly would respond to people's doubts and misgivings with like essentially just gas lighting techniques. They'd be like, "That sounds like a you problem." Um, like that happened really early on. That Mark said something like, he said that he was noticing all the kindness and acceptance in the group, and he said to Nancy, like, "There's something off about this. You guys are, you guys are up to something." And Nancy was like, "What if it's not a problem? What if you're the problem?"

0:23:51 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah, right.

0:24:22 Lindsey: Um, so anyway, so using, using those kinds of of techniques and building it into the ideology was another thing that that Nexium did really well. It's like, if you are having doubts, if you are having intuitions that this is wrong, that's just part of that problem that you came here to fix. And, so it's, you know, it's turning all those things back on the person and making them feel ashamed of it. And, and it's very effective at suppressing dissent.

0:24:39 Thomas: Yeah By the way, uh, don't go start a cult everybody. Maybe I should have said that at the outset I don't know why I guess you're lindsey's got us on a how-to guide. Yeah

0:24:49 Lindsey: Yeah. Don't, don't do that. Bunch of people will give you their money and they'll have sex with you. Definitely don't do any of this. Um,

0:25:04 Thomas: Yeah, no cults, okay now I covered that

0:25:05 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, so shaming, shunning, that's, those are naturally like very punishing, painful experiences for people. And so if you're employing things like that, it's very effective at reducing dissent. And then also that idea of like getting people to question their own intuitions, which is what we were just talking about. Their whole thing about viscera. And the point of all that was essentially that your emotions aren't a trustworthy indicator of what you should or shouldn't do. You shouldn't pay attention to your emotional responses, which is about the worst advice I can think to give anybody about anything. Thing, I mean,

0:25:39 Thomas: Well, I don't know, it depends. I don't know, are you somebody who uh gets really mad and punches people or something? And maybe I think it all depends on how you are, yeah.

0:25:46 Lindsey: That's that's fair. That's fair, That's, that's very true, but um, in general, right, unless you've, you've got something going on where your emotional reactions are producing severe dysfunction, in which case you should probably go to therapy and you'll have a great time and it'll be good, um, but in general emotions are, they're, they're reliable indicators of something that you need to pay attention to. If I'm angry, like generally that's an indication that somebody is violating a norm or something. And so the technique that they were using there to get people to not only, it's not just questioning their own intuitions, it is to flat out disregard their own intuitions and instead to rely on the group to figure out what they should think.

Like that was the explicit sort of directive there. That's exactly the kinds of things that set you up for groupthink, for depending on the group to do your thinking for you, essentially. So we're sleep deprived, we're starved, and then we're in this situation where we're not trusting our own minds to think critically about things, it's going to be much, much more difficult to question what's going on in the group to the extent that we might, if we, if we didn't

0:26:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:04 Lindsey: Have all those things happening. Oh,

0:27:04 Thomas: Plus you know, socially isolated, so you're not gonna, you know, you don't have as many outsiders to talk to about it. Yeah, you know, it sounds like COVID is a recipe for cults, but, except for the social distancing part, like, if they're, that's, that's maybe the saving grace, digital cult.

0:27:11 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly right, and that's Yeah. Oh, actually, so maybe that, that is exactly where, what I was thinking, yeah, I mean, not that we should start one, but the, those seem to be popping up. Well, I was thinking to cue it on, but true.

0:27:30 Thomas: No. Oh. Are they? Oh. Okay, yeah, well, that, that predates uh COVID, but yeah.

0:27:40 Lindsey: True. But it's getting a lot of momentum right now.

0:27:40 Thomas: Yeah. Um, so are you trying to transition me to that? Are you done with your, your other stuff? Yeah.

0:27:49 Lindsey: Pretty much, I mean the, the only other point I had was about the isolation thing, but we've, I think we've talked about that. There's that it's, it's usually part of the ideology to put separations between the

0:27:54 Thomas: Well, Sure. So okay, you've run through these uh um, correct, these methods, these all this, these uh characteristics of cults.

0:28:05 Lindsey: Recipe If you will.

0:28:06 Thomas: Yeah, cult recipe. Want to be fair. Like, on one hand, the easy, you know, insult is like, well, Trumpism is a cult kind of thing. But on the other hand, maybe it's not necessarily a cult in the way that you're making out. But I want ask your opinion on that. I mean, when you talk about Trumpism or QAnon, it starts to get kind of culty.

0:28:07 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:28:29 Thomas: And especially, Especially, God, like I just, personal, not my personal example, but a, you family member just showed me an example of something they received talking about, you know, how Trump is the greatest human to ever be in the world. Like the level of worship that's going into Trump seems to be bordering on something cult-like. Do you see?

0:28:30 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:28:54 Lindsey: Like a cult cult of personality.

0:28:56 Thomas: Yeah. Do you? So, so what do you think is fair to say there? You know, like where is it fair, where is it might not be fair to compare Trump supporters to cult members.

0:29:06 Lindsey: Yeah, I mean, I think that I think that most of the similarities, and I when I did start to do some reading on this, I found out that like people who study cults have already made this comparison with QAnons. So I think it is, it is fair to make that comparison. And I think a lot of it, a lot of the similarities really come down to that last part that we were just talking about, right? The ways that the ways that the ideology is sort of self-protective. And so if people express doubt or dissent about the conspiracy theories that are part of QAnon, that's just evidence that you're an outsider, right? And that you're hostile to this, or maybe that you are part of the conspiracy to the people that are already like super invested in it, um, and then you know the the enforcement of group norms, the, you know, punishing that kind of behavior.

0:29:16 Thomas: Okay, yeah.

0:29:51 Thomas: They're definitely the communal aspects, the social, you know, they're they meet up at the Trump rallies. There's like the QAnon signs that kind of signal to each other that they have that. But we were talking a little bit before recording and you know it's interesting to look at QAnон. At first I suggested like oh yeah we can talk about QAnons as a cult. And then I kind of had a second thought of like, well, it's not exactly the same because there is no Q, you know, it's not a real, I mean, there is a guy who posted a thing in a forum that kind of turned into that in some way or something that, yeah. And it's weirdly QAnon is almost like a self-directed cult.

It's like, make your own, it's instead of the going to the, uh, to the pizza place to get a pizza, it's like a take-home, uh it's like Papa Murphy's or whatever. You kind of go online. I guess they're doing it together in the forums or whatever, but it's a weird self-directed thing. Nobody is telling them what the Q stuff is per se. They're divining it from very stupid, incorrect information. But they as long as they can kind of agree on a direction, then they come up with this whole theory for anyone who doesn't know that Trump is actually freeing, you know, child sex slaves from the Clinton cabal, you know, and that's a mall report. There's a theory that Mueller was actually part of that, like Mueller was on Trump's side, but they had it's all this nonsense.

0:29:56 Lindsey: Right.

0:30:22 Lindsey: But he's probably not having sex with lots of women, yeah. Yeah.

0:30:45 Lindsey: No, you're right, yeah.

0:31:17 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:31:17 Thomas: Sense. And it's all based on this Q who is in the deep state, like kind of feeding morsels of information to the public about this. Um, so yeah, I know you were wanting to jump in a couple of times there, so I'll go ahead.

0:31:18 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:31:31 Lindsey: I, well, I mean, what I was gonna say at first was like, yeah, it does kind of feel like a cult without a leader, but I, I don't know, I mean, even though Q is probably not a single person, I think he, I think Q probably feels that way to the people that follow this, right, um, and he's still doing, I think, kind of the same thing that a lot of these cult leaders are doing, um, like, you know, okay.

0:31:47 Thomas: Yeah. I think it's just an offshoot of the Trump cult though. I think Trump is still now, I'm just, this just me putting this out there. I don't know that there's anything, any such thing as a QAnon supporter that doesn't like Trump. I think it all still comes down to QAnons, maybe the name of it and the central figure who is allegedly releasing information from the deep state or whatever, but it still centers around this fake heroic Trump action that he's taking, you know?

0:32:23 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah.

0:32:31 Thomas: So yeah.

0:32:30 Lindsey: That makes sense, so trying

0:32:32 Thomas: So maybe it's all, it all comes down to Trump. All roads, instead of all roads leading to Keith trying to have sex with you, all roads leading to Trump lead to Trump being a, yeah, no trying to, it's more about Trump just being this incredible, all powerful figure, I think.

0:32:40 Lindsey: To have sex with you, yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's uh, that's interesting, because like, yeah, it's to the extent that Q is acting like a cult leader here, it's definitely not in the same way that Keith was, and Trump seems to be filling that role more prototypically, I think, as the cult leader, but he didn't start the cult. I don't know, it's weird, weird, um, I don't know, I could read some more about this, that'd be fun, yeah.

0:33:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, we could, so cult of personality, I mean, is that just a saying that, you know, maybe isn't technically as accurate, or how much do you think, what are the, uh, I don't know, how does it overlap? We can just talk about Trump, we don't have to talk about specific Q nonsense, okay.

0:33:25 Lindsey: Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know, my, my understanding is that cult of personality is, is sort of metaphorical. I don't, I don't think that's like a a psyche term to I think overlap is really about how those beliefs are getting perpetuated. Um, I think that one thing that's very distinctive about cult ideologies is that, you know, through these kind of isolating techniques and things that, again, like they have methods of perpetuating themselves in the face of criticism specifically, and that is definitely what's true about QAnon and and all the other conspiracy theories that have sort of taken out, taken, um, taken off, right, is That that the dissent is just more proof that the conspiracy is actually true. That's a very cult-like kind of thing.

0:33:33 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:10 Thomas: But you know what's interesting within QAnon about that is two different, if you grab two different QAnons people, they their views about what's really happening are going to be, so they're just batshit, like they're just nuts, and they might be contradictory. Like, two people who are into the QAnon thing, one might think Mueller is evil deep state democrat or something, or is in on the sex slaves or something, whatever it may be, and another might think no, he was actually helping Trump all along, this, they were, whatever, and like, but they still get to be part of the same cult for some reason, and maybe maybe that reason is that Trump is the central figure there. It's not about, like, again, I don't, maybe someone can find an example. I don't think there's a QAnon member that's going to be saying that Trump is actually evil.

0:35:01 Thomas: I think maybe that's where the commonality is. But it's interesting that they can have such contradictory theories about everything else and it doesn't really matter.

0:35:10 Lindsey: Yeah, I want to say that that's a common feature of, like, conspiracy theories, right? Like, there might be some central premise that has to be consistent. So it's always that, you know, liberals are evil, satanic people that are involved in child sex trafficking. So that's going to be persistent, right. Like, are there any QAnon believers who don't agree with that premise?

0:35:17 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right. Naturally, of course. Yeah. Right, right, right. Right. Well, then maybe it's more. Is it more appropriate to talk about QAnon as just a conspiracy theory thing than than any sort of cult thing? Maybe that's more appropriate.

0:35:41 Lindsey: So, Maybe, I mean, it feels culty. It feels, it feels like, uh, um, it feels like a, yeah, yeah,

0:35:46 Thomas: There's a Venn diagram. Maybe it's like once you start meeting, whether it be virtually or whatever, and kind of sharing that communal aspect to it, maybe then it kind of borders on both things. Things. Hmm.

0:35:58 Lindsey: Yeah, Or the fact that it does seem to have a central figure in it makes it, makes it a little, a little more culty than a lot of conspiracy theories. Like, I don't, is the moon landing, does that have some sort of central Christ-like figure in the center of it? But I don't, I don't think it does.

0:36:10 Thomas: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Buzz Aldrin. No, not, not Buzz, the anti-Buzz Aldrin, I guess. Joe Rogan. Yeah, well,

0:36:17 Lindsey: So yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I mean, there you go. There you go. Yeah, so I mean that it does, there's some reason, God, I wish I'd finished reading that article. There was some reason that people who study cults have compared QAnon to a cult and maybe, maybe it is the focus on that, on the central figure of Trump. I donno.

0:36:39 Thomas: Maybe we can, we of round this out by talking about we, we were going to talk a little bit about the, the healthy balances of these things. What do you think people should be on the lookout for? You know, what, what if it's whether it's with you or with your family member or somebody, a friend or somebody, what should you be on the lookout? Just, just notice these trends, these tools that cults use to try to recruit people and keep them in. Yeah.

0:37:06 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, I think that, I think that a lot of the warning signs have to do with like, is the, is the person isolating? Are they pulling away from their, their existing relationships? Are they, away from their their, um, their life? Are they investing heavily? Um, cause a lot of the, many cults, in fact, I, I'm having trouble bringing one to mind that, that doesn't do this. Many cults require that people give these huge financial investments.

0:37:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:33 Lindsey: So I think that those kinds of things are really big warning signs.

0:37:36 Thomas: And uh, maybe uh, recognize that some dude named Keith probably doesn't have, have all the answers and isn't, isn't going to solve all of your problems in life. Maybe that's better.

0:37:44 Lindsey: No. And it's not that good at sex. You

0:37:49 Thomas: Hey, who knows?

0:37:49 Lindsey: Can just tell.

0:37:50 Thomas: Maybe he's great. I don't know, but that doesn't mean he's a cult. Well, I'm not talking only about Keith. I'm talking about whoever the next Keith is for somebody.

0:37:51 Lindsey: No, I don't think so. Oh, oh, I see. Okay.

0:37:59 Thomas: That is, I don't know if that, that contradicts the fact that it's a culture or not.

0:38:02 Lindsey: I don't know. I think that if you're good at sex you probably don't have to start a cult.

0:38:08 Thomas: You heard it from a psychologist, everybody.

0:38:11 Lindsey: An evolutionary psychologist at that. There you go.

0:38:13 Thomas: Evolutionary psychologist. I'll clarify. Yeah. Yeah.

0:38:15 Lindsey: Oh dear, oh dear.

0:38:15 Thomas: Okay. Well, we highly recommend watching that documentary and there are plenty, unfortunately too many examples of cults in the, in the real world and it doesn't seem to be going away. I think that, I think, that these, these things are kind of universal, you know, like these, that the fact that humans need the social, you know, uh, belonging, the factthat they need meaning the fact, you know, it's, it's, it's always in some ways, maybe mainstream religion is something that helps people not be in cults or is it a gateway to, to further religious beliefs that would help people? I don't know either way things, I guess, things that give people meaning that aren't cults, I guess anything that does that would, would, uh, would be a positive force in fighting against more cult-like, uh. Induction, I guess.

0:38:20 Lindsey: Yep. Absolutely.

0:38:50 Lindsey: Probably. Yeah.

0:39:07 Lindsey: Yeah, like we should all just start communes and and not have the the weird cult sex part of it.

0:39:10 Thomas: Yeah. Any, anything you say is a gateway to cults, I think. There's no, we should all start knitting separately. That's boring though.

0:39:19 Lindsey: Yeah? Yeah. No, I mean, I think that the biggest things are we should be doing things, we should should be setting up structures to belonging, right? I mean, our society is not really set up that well for encouraging that. We go through all these huge social transitions that essentially mean that we have to rebuild our social networks from scratch at least a couple of times in our lives.

0:39:35 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:39:48 Lindsey: The way that we live is very isolated. I think that a lot of that creates creates situations that, that create more and more people that are likely to, to really be charmed by what's going on in cults.

0:40:01 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. It's like whether it's the lack of the social belonging or the lack lack of the meaning or both sounds like, uh, we're kind of geared up for that. Well, be on the lookout. Uh, do friends don't let friends join cults. So, uh.

0:40:07 Lindsey: Yeah. Well said.

0:40:16 Thomas: All right. Well, Lindsey, thanks for taking us through all that. Um, and watch out for dudes named Keith who, yeah, I apologize to all the Keith's who listen. Hey, you, you know, it's like Karen, I guess that's been given a bad name too but all right

0:40:22 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Hmm. So to speak.

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