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Cultic Studies Journal
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Expanding
the Groupthink Explanation to the Study of Contemporary Cults
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Psychological
Manipulation and Society: cults, cult groups, new religious movements
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Cultic
Studies Journal
Psychological Manipulation and Society
Vol. 12, No. 1, 1995
Expanding
the Groupthink Explanation to the Study of Contemporary Cults
- Mark N. Wexler, Ph.D.
Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British Columbia
Abstract:
Janis's groupthink model is the most frequently used model in studying group
decision making. This paper critically reviews Janis's model and seeks to evaluate its
applicability to the study of decision making in cults. Janis's model is found wanting. It
fails to look at:
- how cult
leaders, through the use of ordeals, draws a loyal, elite group of decision
makers about them,
- how the decision elite within a cult use a mechanism of
social control based on guilt, fear, or shame to create deindividuation in cult members,
- how the decision elite are imbued with the virtue of
infallibility and how this is used to create enthusiastic conformity in cult members, and
- how the wild premises and erratic decision making in the
cult are facilitated by the awe in which the cult members hold the charismatic leader.
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CSJ 