Cults in the Classroom: Tools to Spark Curiosity in Psychology

Summary

What makes cults so fascinating, and how can they become a powerful tool for teaching psychology? Dr. Wind Goodfriend, social psychologist and Sage author, provides the complete toolkit for a class where the psychology of cults becomes a catalyst for sparking curiosity, critical thinking, and active engagement among students.

This episode dives into how cults, with their gripping narratives and psychological intricacies, can be used to explore everything from social influence to cognitive dissonance. Wind shares insights from her popular course "The Psychology of Cults," offering a roadmap for educators to teach about the psychology of persuasion, brainwashing, and human behavior in ways that resonate deeply with students.

What We Talk About

Here’s what’s covered in the episode:

• Using Cults as a Teaching Tool: Creative ways to incorporate cult studies into lessons, whether for a single class or an entire semester.
• Fostering Critical Thinking: How controversial and complex topics like cults challenge students to engage with the nuances, question assumptions, and build their analytical skills.
• Exploring Real-World Applications: Stories and case studies on infamous cults that connect psychological theories to real-life scenarios.
• Creating Engaged Classrooms: How psychology instructors can make learning more relatable and memorable, encouraging lifelong curiosity.

Wind also shares activities, assignments, and resources she uses to engage students while guiding them to understand psychological manipulation tactics and how to apply those lessons beyond the classroom.

About the Author

Dr. Wind Goodfriend is a Professor of Experimental Psychology and Assistant Dean for Liberal Arts at Buena Vista University, where she has been a dedicated educator for 19 years. Known for her impactful teaching, she has been named Faculty of the Year three times and earned the prestigious Wythe Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her research focuses on combating relationship violence, sexism, and homophobia.

An accomplished author, Wind’s latest textbook, Psychology and Our Curious World, published by Sage, adds to her portfolio of 12 books, dozens of journal articles, and contributions to psychology in pop culture. She also created and appeared in The Great Courses docuseries on cult manipulation. A passionate mentor, her work continues to inspire students and enrich psychology education. 

You can email Wind at goodfriend@bvu.edu.

Transcript

00:00:15:03 - 00:00:41:13

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Dr. Wind Goodfriend. I am a psychology professor and the assistant dean of Liberal arts at a school in Iowa called Buena Vista University. And I'm really excited to share with you today my presentation, which I'm calling cults in the classroom, which is really going to be about how you can incorporate talking about groups that some people call cults into your psychology classes.

00:00:41:15 - 00:01:11:20

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Various ways that you could do that, ranging from a single day to an entire course that would last an entire semester or term on the idea of cults. So we're going to talk about class discussions that you could have critical thinking on the idea of cults. How do you define cults, paper assignments, activities? To, like I said, an entire course that I have developed and taught now three times at my university and, just how you might do that in your own classroom.

00:01:12:00 - 00:01:24:18

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Okay. So let me start by just, giving you a little bit of information as to how I got interested in the idea of cults and psychology and the overlap between those two things. I think cults are inherently interesting. They're one of those ways that students are sort of naturally curious about psychology. And I love topics in psychology that build that natural curiosity and, and foster natural curiosity, because so many things in psychology are just inherently and intrinsically interesting. I find myself watching documentaries about cults, reading memoirs of cult survivors, and, and I think that I noticed this crossover because I was reading articles in the news about cults, and I started to think about the psychology of cults.

00:01:58:10 - 00:02:20:10

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So I'd like to show you just a couple of the stories that I was seeing in the news. So one that I noticed was things like, are college professors trying to brainwash students? So this idea of brainwashing was coming up and I thought about, well, what does that word even mean? What does it mean to brainwash someone?

00:02:20:12 - 00:02:54:23

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Am I brainwashing my students? I don't think I am, but what does that word mean? How are we operationalizing brainwashing? So that got me thinking about how are we using these terms? Is there a negative connotation? I think clearly there is to the word brainwashing. Who's defining that? We see this book called brainwashed. It is from, a pretty conservative author who is basically saying that students are being, brainwashed by liberal professors.

00:02:55:00 - 00:03:27:21

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

I probably would be qualified as a pretty liberal person myself. Most of my classes are teaching about stereotypes and prejudice, and, I define myself as a pretty politically liberal person. So maybe I'm one of the people, to whom this author is referring. So again, we see these articles about college, liberal brainwashing, the youth of the United States.

00:03:27:23 - 00:03:56:02

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Over and over again, I was seeing these articles, and they are accusing only left wing professors of brainwashing students. Not right wing professors are brainwashing students. So I thought that was interesting. Is that a bias in and of itself? And then I saw this funny meme or tweets. I feel like if professors actually had the power to brainwash their students, a lot more students would be reading the syllabus.

00:03:56:02 - 00:04:25:10

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And that made me laugh because my students don't read the syllabus. So I'm not sure we're really doing that, but it made me laugh and made me think about this crossover between college and brainwashing and cults and psychology. And then a completely second way of this coming into my life, occurred as a surprise, which was that my good friend and colleague Tom Heinzen brought up the idea of cults.

00:04:25:12 - 00:04:50:12

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So some people may have heard of my friend Tom, because he is the co-author of some of my textbooks published through Sage Publishing. So I've written three textbooks now with Tom, Social Psychology and Psychology and Our Curious World are two of our more popular ones. Psychology and our Curious World just came out while I'm recording this.

00:04:50:14 - 00:05:08:19

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And it's our new textbook for introduction to psychology. And Tom and I were having dinner one night. We're celebrating one of our books. Being, you know, relatively successful. And he said, you know, and I've come a really long way since I lived in that cult for ten years. And I thought, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wow, Tom, what are you talking about? You know? As he told me his story, it just became more and more fascinating to me. And I realized so much of social psychology and what I teach my students every day in social psychology is the life of cult members.

00:05:28:23 - 00:05:57:04

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

It's about the indoctrination and the recruiting and the persuasion and the cognitive dissonance and then the process that he explained to me about how he got out of the cult was also social psychology. And I realized I was so fascinated by this. And my students are fascinated by the lives of cult members that I really wanted to learn more, and that this cult, this class would also be interesting to my students.

00:05:57:10 - 00:06:19:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So my university was supportive enough to let me develop this entire course. So I now teach a class that is called The Psychology of Cults like you should every other year, and it has five units. I'm going to describe the units for you today and tell you a little bit about the assignments and the readings and the activities.

00:06:19:10 - 00:06:50:04

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And as I said at the beginning, you could develop an entire course yourself, or you could just narrow it down to a single day in a social psychology class. An introduction to Psychology class cognitive psychology, even something like a university seminar or first year course where students are learning about college life or critical thinking. Really, you could adapt these ideas into almost any psychology class and use them, however, will be relevant to your classroom.

00:06:50:06 - 00:07:18:18

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

But I think that students are so interested in how do people think? How do they make decisions? What should I be looking out for? What are red flags and cults? That this is something that students will really get excited about and see how psychology is applicable and why psychology really matters. And, it's such an exciting topic that I think it's as a way to get students to build that natural curiosity and to see how psychology can be applicable in the real world and to their own lives.

00:07:18:20 - 00:07:39:11

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So what you can see here, if you're if you're, looking at the slides here is the five major units in my class and the papers that I assigned to each of those units. So the five units in my class are first, how do you define a class. And we also talk about the controversy behind that word called.

00:07:39:13 - 00:08:04:18

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

The second unit is are you already in a cult? So I'll talk about that in just a minute. The third unit is who leads and joins cults. So basically, talking about the psychology of cult members, the leaders, and the followers. The fourth unit is what psychological tactics do cults use to recruit, indoctrinate, and exploit their cult members?

00:08:04:18 - 00:08:27:04

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So that's really kind of the brainwashing unit. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. And then finally we end the class on really more of a hopeful message, which is how do people escape and heal from the psychological scars of being in a cult. So you can also see on this slide the paper assignments that go along with each of those units in my semester long class.

00:08:27:10 - 00:08:38:22

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And I'll talk about the readings and the paper instructions, as I go with each unit. So let's get started. I'll dive into each of these units and I'll talk about the activities in the papers along the way.

00:08:38:22 - 00:09:01:03

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Let's start with the beginning of the class. At the very beginning of the course, we start with how do we even define a cult. And this is really a debate with academic scholars. So I've now been doing research on this for about ten years. I am a member of a professional organization. It's called the International Cultic Studies Association.

00:09:01:08 - 00:09:25:04

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And they have conferences. They publish, academic journals on this subject. And one of the big debates is how do we define a cult? How can you know whether a group qualifies as a cult? So we start by having the students read a couple of chapters from the book Cults Inside Out by Rick Allen Roth, who is one of the leading academic scholars on this subject.

00:09:25:06 - 00:09:48:05

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And we have them read this book called, Troublemaker by Leah Remini. And this is, sort of known to the students now because Leah Remini has, well, she's a celebrity. She had the show, the King of Queens, and she also has a show, that's basically about her experience in Scientology. 

00:09:48:05 - 00:09:56:03

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Now, it's very important to acknowledge that Scientology is a controversial group that some people consider a cult like Leah Remini and other people do not. We do discuss other groups from history that we do call cults, for example. So I'm just going to go through a couple of other groups. And just in case people listening to this or watching this, are not as familiar with them, many of my students are younger, maybe 20 years or younger. And so I do spend a little bit of time just in the first week familiarizing them with some of these groups, because their historic groups.

00:10:26:08 - 00:10:38:07

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And so just in case people watching this or listening to this are not as familiar with these groups, I'm just going to spend like maybe one minute on each of these groups. So the first is Jim Jones and People's Temple. This is probably the most famous cult in history, because of their unfortunate and tragic ending. So Jim Jones grew up in Indiana, in rural Indiana, and he…I personally believe that he did, in fact, have positive intentions. When he started his church in Indianapolis, he believed in ending racism. His church in Indiana, in Indianapolis, did good. It actually used the funding for the church to help poor people. It gave scholarships for people to go to community colleges. He funded some, retirement homes for the elderly. He made sure that people of different races sat next to each other in his church, which was unheard of at the time.

00:11:28:17 - 00:12:01:13

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

But as his popularity grew, he started taking some drugs. His paranoia grew and it really kind of snowballed from there. He eventually moved to California and then eventually moved to Guyana, South America. And as most people who are a little bit older than most of my students are familiar, he did eventually murder a Congress person who visited Guyana and convinced his congregation to die from cyanide laced—most people think it's Kool-Aid, but it was actually Flavor Aid. And just over 900 people died, from suicide. And, it's controversial whether you could claim that that was, in fact, suicide or murder, because some of them were forced to die. But that's really one of the most tragic endings of a group that is considered to be a cult in history.

00:12:26:21 - 00:12:36:13

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So we talk about people's temple, they watch some documentaries, and they read some book chapters and articles about People's Temple. Another group that many people consider a cult is a Charles Manson's group that is called The Family. So the Manson family was manipulated by Charles Manson to murder ten people over several locations and evenings. And, this was really a manipulation because Manson was upset that he was a failed musician.

00:13:00:22 - 00:13:37:10

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So he targeted people that were, tangentially related to the music industry or, or were simply in rich neighborhoods. He tried to flint to frame the Black Panthers for these murders. It was done very clumsily. And, he really manipulated young women, mostly who he kind of picked up and drugged and sexually exploited. So Manson it's controversial whether he had mental health issues or whether he kind of faked these mental health issues.

00:13:37:12 - 00:14:00:01

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

But this is one of the more notorious groups because of the sexual exploitation. And, indoctrination that he had over these young women who were basically manipulated into murdering people on his behalf. Another group that is lesser known, but is really quite horrible is David Berg and the Children of God. So David Berg started a pseudo Christian religion, in California, and it quickly grew to be international.

00:14:12:03 - 00:15:00:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

David Berg preached that any love was okay if it was in the name of love. Any sexual love was okay if it was in the name of Christian love. And unfortunately, that meant that he could exploit people to his own motives. Famously, that led to two really horrible ways that he manipulated people. Those two most infamous ways were that women in his group were convinced to do what he called flirty fishing or be fishers of men, which is, a phrase from the Christian Bible, which was supposed to be like to be evangelical.

00:15:00:13 - 00:15:27:14

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

But he interpreted that to be, that women could be sex workers for his group and, either recruit the men that they had sex with to be in the group or to use the money that they earned to donate to the group. And they weren't allowed to use birth control when they were being sex workers. And so then any children that they had were raised in the group.

00:15:27:16 - 00:15:54:02

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And even worse than that was that, David Berg was a pedophile. And so, children raised in the group were trained to dance naked for him in videos and that, pedophilia was allowed in the group. So adults were molesting and raping children in the group. So just disgusting and horrible. 

00:15:55:20 - 00:16:08:04

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Another group that we talk about in my class is Marshall Applewhite and Heaven's Gate. So Heaven's Gate became very famous in 1997 when the bodies of 39 people were discovered in California, who had died by suicide because they believed that there was a spaceship hidden in the tail of the Hale-Bopp Comet. So Marshall Applewhite convinced these people that he had a prophecy that the spaceship would take them to heaven, which is why it was called Heaven's Gate.

00:16:24:00 - 00:17:02:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And they ate poisoned pudding. That and that they believed that their souls would be taken up into heaven. There are videos of the group, talking about their beliefs, which were essentially that they had to give up anything that made them human. That included their emotions, that included their gender, that included any sexual feelings that they had for each other, as well as other traditionally cultish beliefs, such as any questioning of the leader, any ties to their family, any money that they had had to go to the cult.

00:17:02:10 - 00:17:29:01

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Marshall Applewhite voluntarily castrated himself, as well as about seven other men in the group voluntarily were surgically castrated because they believed that they couldn't have any sexual or even emotional feelings. They had to completely give up anything that made them human to be worthy of being on the spaceship, because they believed that, the aliens weren't human and they had to basically become alien.

00:17:29:03 - 00:17:34:13

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

The last group that I'll mention, which is featured quite a bit in my class, is Keith Ranieri and Nexium. So Keith Ranieri is a misogynist jerk, who created a group called Nexium, which was sold to people as basically self-help groups for, young executives. So you would pay like $2- to $5,000 to go to these workshops. There were between 5 and 21 days long. And supposedly this was going to teach you things like better communication and prioritizing your ethics and things like that. And he claims to be this genius, who was super ethical. And he was, you know, a concert pianist and a judo champion and all these other extravagant claims. But really, Nexium was a pyramid scheme in terms of his business model, but also it was a sex pyramid scheme. So he would recruit any women that he found sexually desirable and then exploit and indoctrinate them, and punish them if they didn't please him. So basically when I say sex pyramid scheme, he would, recruit women, have sex with them in, in this really manipulative way, and then call them his slaves and convince them to recruit six additional women and they would be the master over those sex slaves, and then those slaves would have to recruit their own sex slaves and so on down the pyramid scheme.

00:19:15:20 - 00:19:31:24

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So, it really was this kind of like a cascading pyramid scheme of sex slaves. And each of these women, was supposed to recruit six additional women who would get branded with Keith Ranieri's initials on their skin. So this is one of the brands, and it's you can see that, it's Keith Ranieri's initials. So my students read a memoir of one of the women who was recruited and branded by this guy. So they read all these, empirical journal articles and memoirs and book chapters about what makes a cult and what is it like to live in a cult. So it's these really, horrible experiences. But the idea is don't join a cult.

00:20:07:10 - 00:20:35:12

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

What are the red flags of cults? And, how do they work? And we talk about things like victim blaming. We talk about, why do people start cults? Right. How can we understand the mindset of these cult leaders? And so let's talk a little bit about the assignments and activities and, how you can use these ideas in your own class.

00:20:35:14 - 00:21:02:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

One thing that we do is we talk about what makes a group a cult. Right? So these groups are pretty extreme, right? So one of the critical thinking exercises is to talk about other groups that are controversial. So let's look at some groups that have been called cults. But maybe aren't as clear an example of this as a child.

00:21:02:10 - 00:21:08:22

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

The 1980s or I was born in the 70s but grew up in the 80s. Dungeons and Dragons. Right. So I self-admit to being like a geeky nerd person. I played Dungeons and Dragons as a child. As a, as a teenager. I don't think the dungeons and Dragons is a cult, but certainly with the satanic panic of the 1980s, a lot of people thought that it was a cult.

00:21:27:19 - 00:21:49:17

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And it's risen in popularity again through shows like Stranger Things. So does Dungeons and Dragons count as a cult? And my students read an academic article talking about the Satanic panic. And I explain what that is, and we talk about, okay, what are the reasons that someone might think that Dungeons and Dragons would count as a cult?

00:21:49:19 - 00:22:05:05

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

They also read an article talking about Alcoholics Anonymous and how some people might think that Alcoholics Anonymous counts as a cult. So why or why not? Let's use critical thinking to talk about the criteria and try to apply that. So it's a great way to explain what is critical thinking to get students to get engaged in this kind of content.

00:22:12:24 - 00:22:41:05

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

It's a it's another good way to think about the word cult itself. Right? And to think about the controversy behind the word. Anyone who's not in the group could accuse any other group of being in a cult, right? Any religion that you're not in looks like a cult when you're from the outside, right? If you're not Catholic, if you're not Muslim, if you're not Jewish, the rituals seem very odd to outsiders.

00:22:41:07 - 00:22:55:07

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So is it fair to classify any cult as a cult? So we talk about other terms that many academics use, such as new religious movement. All legitimate faiths were new at some point, right? So should we use the word cult at all? It's also a really good use of, the term continuous versus categorical, because a lot of people say there isn't a yes or a no to the question, is this group a cult? It's really on a spectrum, or a range, or a continuum. So I can say these are the criteria for cults. And the question of whether something is or is not a cult isn't a yes or no. It's basically more or less cult or cultish or cult-esque. Right? So I can say, well, how many checks can I give a group? How many red flags does it have? That's kind of one question. So I can say the more red flags a group has, the more confident I can be that I think it is a cult.

00:23:56:02 - 00:24:18:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

I can also say, how extreme are these red flags? So it's a question of how many red flags are there and how red are those flags? Right. So how many checks are there and how extreme are the checks. So it's a really good way for students to start thinking about things in terms of it's not always a dichotomy.

00:24:18:14 - 00:24:47:01

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Sometimes there are shades of gray. That said, one of the things that my students do is they read a very famous list of criteria that comes from this book from 1961 that was written by Robert Jay Lifton. So he's a psychiatrist, and he wrote the most famous list of criteria ever written on what makes something a cult or a coercive group.

00:24:47:03 - 00:25:17:03

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And it's called the Eight Deadly Sins. So he wrote this book after doing interviews of prisoners of war from the Korean War, and he was talking to, survivors who were prisoners of war from Communist China during the Korean War. And he was talking to them about how what, brainwashing techniques were used on you so that the term brainwashing is the term that he used.

00:25:17:05 - 00:25:43:02

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And, he created this list of sort of coercion tactics, and now this list of eight tactics are what is most commonly referred to by scholars who are talking about cults. So what are these eight deadly sins? They're on the next, PowerPoint slide. So I'll go through them relatively quickly. But the book chapter goes through each of these and really defines it.

00:25:43:04 - 00:26:12:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So here are the eight deadly sins. The first is called Milieu Control. So Milieu is just the French word for environment. And what he's referring to here is basically a group that controls your physical environment. So maybe, makes you live in, like a commune, or when they're trying to manipulate you really kind of isolates you.

00:26:12:12 - 00:26:38:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So makes you go to a workshop or, like a weekend retreat type of thing where you're only surrounded by other people in the group. But it's not just that physical control. It's also really about a mental control. So it's the idea that you're not allowed to read things that are from other groups, or you're not allowed to read anything that's critical of your group.

00:26:38:10 - 00:27:06:23

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And you're not allowed to communicate with anybody who, might question the group. And cutting off friendships with people who aren't in your group, not allowed to date, people who aren't in your group, things like that. The second one is Mystical Manipulation. So this is the promotion of the leader in this very magical kind of way. So saying that the leader is special, the leader is a genius.

00:27:06:23 - 00:27:42:06

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

The leader has some sort of magical insight. The leader has been visited. The leader is a prophet. The leader has an IQ that's, you know, in the top point 1% of the world. Something like that. The third is called Demand for Purity. So this is the idea that there are rules about how you should behave, how you should act, how you should dress, how you should think that are increasingly difficult.

00:27:42:08 - 00:28:02:22

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

The threshold keeps going up and up, and really they're impossible for anyone. So there will always be a way for you to feel guilty. There will always be a way for you to have fault, and it's way to control you and make you never be able to live up to their demands so that they can control you.

00:28:02:22 - 00:28:42:17

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

They can punish you, they can make you feel like you're not measuring up. And it's a way for them to psychologically control you. The next one is called Cult of Confession. Cult of Confession is the idea that you will have to snitch on yourself and snitch on each other. So basically, this is a way for them to make you monitor your own thoughts and make you suffer from feeling guilty about your own humanity.

00:28:42:17 - 00:29:14:23

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Because we're all human. We all make mistakes. But it's also a way for you to confess your own sins and this has multiple benefits to the group. One is, if you're confessing your secrets, they can hold that against you later and blackmail you. One is another benefit of the group is that, you can never trust other people because they've built this kind of culture of snitching.

00:29:15:00 - 00:29:47:10

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

You can never know who else to trust in the group because you don't know. If I tell my best friend or my partner that I have doubts, they might report me, right. And if you do publicly share something that's, like a secret. And even if you're publicly forgiven, that can be very emotional and cathartic. And that actually bonds you to the group because it's kind of like public therapy.

00:29:47:12 - 00:30:09:00

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And it feels really good, actually, for you to kind of get that off your chest and for you to feel forgiven by the group or by the leader, and you now feel the sort of, like benevolence. You feel like the leader is benevolent and loving toward you. And now you feel bonded to the group and to the leader because you're like, oh, they're so loving toward me.

00:30:09:02 - 00:30:38:07

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And so you feel this sort of sense of obligation to them. The next one is Sacred Science. Sacred Science is the idea that the doctrine, the dogma of the group is, special. And, it's sort of, either fake science, like, this is their technology, it's patented, or that it's divine in some way. Right?

00:30:38:07 - 00:30:40:12

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Like, we've interpreted the script in some way where every single other religion got this wrong and we're the only ones that got it right. And, and you can only go to heaven if you're in our faith. Right. And so they basically threaten you by going to hell if you're not in this particular little group. So it's basically there's a contingency where if you're not following our specific interpretation, there will be some ultimate punishment.

00:31:10:09 - 00:31:37:20

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Loading the Language is that there are special jargony terms in the group that only you and the other people in your community understand. And so it's a nice way for you to bond with the other people because you have this kind of like nicknames for each other, and you have these phrases that you kind of toss around and you're like sort of nodding and winking like, you know, oh, yeah, we even do this in psychology, right?

00:31:37:20 - 00:31:58:05

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Like you can say like, oh, a self-fulfilling prophecy or, you know, like, oh, fundamental attribution error. And we all, like, laugh because we get the joke with each other. And other people kind of like, roll their eyes and they don't know what we're talking about. And any kind of career has this, right? Like, you know, like the other terms that the other people outside of your little group don't know.

00:31:58:07 - 00:32:21:01

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And what it means is that you're building community with each other, but it's building the US versus them, where you seem odd to other people. So. So, it's really kind of building the walls between you and anybody else, and it makes it harder for you to leave because you seem like a weirdo to anybody who's not in the group.

00:32:21:01 - 00:32:45:22

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So it makes it harder and harder for you to, to get out. The next one is Doctrine Over Person. So this is the instilling the belief that the group's goal is more important than your goal. So you should make sacrifices for the good of the group. You should be willing to give up your comfort and your needs for the good of the group.

00:32:45:22 - 00:33:06:22

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Right? So you should give over your paycheck, and you should give over your comfort, and you should give over your body, and you should give over your career for what is good for the group. And then the last one is Dispensing of Existence. And this is really scary and creepy and terrible, which is basically, explicit us versus them.

00:33:06:22 - 00:33:45:21

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

We are better than anyone who's not in the group, and we can dehumanize anyone who is not in the group, and they deserve punishment, and we can lie to them and we can justify lying to them, and we can harm and punish them. And it's okay because they're not the chosen people. So these are really the criteria for, what we would say if a group has the more of these, the group has, the more cult-y we would say the group is and the more extreme any of these has, the more cult-y would say the group is.

00:33:45:23 - 00:34:10:20

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So this brings us to our first activity, and this is probably the favorite activity that we have all semester in my class, which is going back to the very first question that I brought up today, which is, do these things qualify, for college, right. Is academia a cult? So I actually had my students read an article claiming that college is a cult and then I had them do this activity.

00:34:10:22 - 00:34:36:19

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Is college itself a cult? So I've had them read several articles trying to operationalize cults. I have them read an article claiming that college is in fact a cult. And so I say, okay, let's we've written these criteria on the whiteboard. Now let's actually go through these criteria. And I want you to think about your experience. I haven't think about their experience at my university.

00:34:36:19 - 00:35:00:05

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Right. But of course you could apply this to your own university. And I give them the list of criteria. And I had them break up into small groups and go through each one. Think about your experience at this school and tell me, do you think that this applies to your college experience? And by the end of the activity, about two thirds of them, they say, yeah, this kind of applies.

00:35:00:09 - 00:35:26:06

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

A specific example is like live on a commune. So at my university they are required to live on campus unless they're married or they have, you know, like a home address within ten miles of the campus. If they're like from my town, they don't have to live on campus. But that qualifies, right? Promotes unwavering loyalty. They talk about, you know, like the pep rally for the football game, things like that.

00:35:26:08 - 00:35:46:15

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So it's kind of a fun activity, this sort of tongue in cheek, you know, they don't really think it's a cult, but it's a good critical thinking activity. So I would say this is probably, my favorite. If you're just going to spend one day in your class on cults, this is a really good, activity for kind of, thinking about how do we define cults?

00:35:46:15 - 00:36:12:23

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Is college a cult? I like this activity for, just the one day, but the students seem to really enjoy this activity, too, so I highly recommend this one. And if you go to the website with the QR code, I have the instructions for this and the full list of criteria for you. Okay. If you're going to spend a little bit longer, maybe, a week or two in your class on cults, I would say you could assign a paper to your class.

00:36:13:02 - 00:36:44:11

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So, my first two papers in my full semester long class are, the first one is basically after they've read several articles on the criteria for cults, I ask them to basically, identify what they think are the five most important criteria for defining cults. They have to basically come up with their own names. So similar to the list that you saw earlier for lifting like media control or loading the language, something like that doctrine over person.

00:36:44:13 - 00:37:11:09

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

They have to basically, kind of distill those ideas into their five most important qualities or criteria, or red flags. They have to come up with their own names for what they think are the five most important red flags. So come up with their own term for this idea, describe it, and then apply that to one of the famous historic groups that we have talked about in this class so far.

00:37:11:11 - 00:37:42:20

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So, they've seen documentaries at this point. They've read some articles, we've talked about them in class. So, they have to apply their idea to one famous group from history. Then the second paper that we do in class a couple of weeks later is I ask them to do the critical thinking and apply it to their own life. So, I ask them to think about a group that they are currently in and tell me, go back to your first paper and the five criteria that you identified in paper one.

00:37:42:24 - 00:38:03:14

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Now I want you to apply those to a group that you are currently in and apply those to the group and tell me, are you in a cult right now? So, this is a paper that they usually really enjoy writing and they kind of have fun with. And so far, none of my students have said that they are in a cult, but they enjoy writing this paper.

00:38:03:19 - 00:38:24:09

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And a couple of them have said, you know, like, it's borderline, but I'm going to say no. And usually, they choose like a sports team. So, they say, you know, the wrestling team or the track team or something like that. And on this paper, I do step it up and I make them provide APA style citations and references.

00:38:24:11 - 00:38:48:14

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So, we're building that the skills as they go. This is a sophomore level class. So, we're scaffolding those APA style skills as we go. So now they have to have citations and references for each of the criteria. Going back to something that we've learned about so far in the class okay. So now we're about two thirds of the way, sorry, 2/5 of the way into the class.

00:38:48:14 - 00:38:53:00

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And we're going to get into, some personality traits. So, unit three is a fun one. And it's basically let's talk about people in cults. So, who are the cult leaders and who are the cult members? So, one of the things I like to emphasize in this unit is victim blaming, because one of the questions that students have when they start the class is, who are these people who join cults and do these?

00:39:21:20 - 00:39:46:19

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

What they the term that they use is crazy things, right? Like they die by suicide, or they kill people, right? The people who join cults must be crazy or stupid, right? And a really important lesson is that's basically victim blaming. Right. And so, I really emphasize we only see the outcome. We only see what happens when this is in the news.

00:39:47:00 - 00:40:08:13

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

We don't see how these people were manipulated, how some of these people joined when they were children, how some of these people had no choice because they were forced into this cult. Right. So, it's really important to have empathy for some of these people who were absolutely exploited and were brave enough to get out of the cult later.

00:40:08:15 - 00:40:23:17

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So, this is a really important unit to think about. This kind of victim blaming, which then hopefully applies to other forms of victim blaming, like survivors of sexual assault or psychological abuse in relationships later, which are some of my areas of research.

00:40:23:17 - 00:40:26:05

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So, one of the activities that we do is personality tests. So when I have a class, I have them take personality tests based on the dark triad and the light triad from psychology articles. So, I have them, read these articles on the dark triad in the light triad. And in case you're not familiar, the dark triad is based on three personality traits that are basically, tied to low empathy for other people.

00:40:50:23 - 00:41:18:09

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And I tie this to the cult leaders. So, the three personality traits in the dark triad are narcissism, which is basically like, sort of arrogance, Machiavellianism, which is named for, the author of The Prince, which is, basically like how to be, sort of like a fascist leader of a nation. But it's basically, manipulation tactics and then psychopathy.

00:41:18:11 - 00:41:44:01

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And we talk a little bit more about psychopathy and what is psychopathy. And so, I also show them this article, which is more popular in sort of forensic psychology or criminal justice, but it's basically what are the four common traits of psychopaths? And I talk about how psychopath isn't really a diagnosis in psychology. It's more of something that is used in sort of the field of criminal justice.

00:41:44:03 - 00:42:16:23

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

But it's still a pretty popular model. And so we talk about, the common behavioral outcomes of what are labeled or people who are labeled as sort of psychopaths in psychology, which are these, interpersonal traits, affective traits. So dysregulation of emotion, lifestyle, and antisocial traits. We also talk about personality disorders like antisocial or borderline or narcissistic personality disorder, those kind of cluster B personality disorders.

00:42:17:00 - 00:42:50:00

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

But then when we talk about people who join cults or who are recruited into cults, we talk about the flip side of the dark triad, which is what we call the light triad. So we talk about how most people who join cults are lied to about the groups they are joining, and they're really manipulated into joining groups that they think are positive, legitimate faiths or self-help groups like a yoga group or a charity, or, like I said, a legitimate faith.

00:42:50:02 - 00:43:15:05

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And that slowly they are manipulated, which is unit four of the class. So the light triad is made up of three traits that are really kind of the reciprocal to the dark triad. So, it's things like faith in humanity and belief in the good of diversity and using, your relationships to make the world better or wanting to make yourself better.

00:43:15:07 - 00:43:48:13

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So, the light triad emphasizes that the people who are in the cults, the cult members, are legitimately good people who are being exploited by the cult or the cult leader. So again, we try to emphasize, not victim blaming in this unit. And my students favorite reading in the entire semester is the memoir of a woman who was in a cult in Canada for ten years, and it's this book by Alexandra Amor called Cult, A Love Story.

00:43:48:15 - 00:43:50:04

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So it's this really very compelling and, kind of heart wrenching story about a woman who joined a group she thought was really just kind of, a yoga and meditation group. And she was manipulated for ten years by a woman who was absolutely selfish. We also talk about, sexism and sexual exploitation in the class, because most cults are run by men.

00:44:14:08 - 00:44:20:01

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And this is one of the few groups that we talk about that was run by a woman. So we talk about that as well. So at the end of this unit, the students have thought about these personality traits. They've taken the personality test themselves. They've spoken to Alexandra virtually, and then they write a paper in which they identify four importance personality traits of cult members.

00:44:38:16 - 00:44:58:05

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

It can be about the cult leader. It can be about cult members. And then they apply them to the book, Alexandra Amor’s book, cult A Love Story. So they have to provide APA style citations for each of the traits that they have identified. They have to provide two citations for each trait. So a total of eight citations, right?

00:44:58:07 - 00:45:01:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Two for each of the four traits. They have to identify an AP style citation for the original academic source for the trait, the kind of like describes the trait itself. And they have to provide another citation for where they see that applying in Alexandra Amor’s book. Right. So like a quotation from the book itself.

00:45:18:13 - 00:45:39:00

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And then of course, they have to have like a references page at the end of their paper. So they really like that, application type of paper. The fourth unit is where they have to think about the psychology of brainwashing. Right. So I mentioned this at the start of class. So again we go back to the controversy of the word brainwashing.

00:45:39:00 - 00:46:08:21

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So brainwashing is this very loaded word. A lot of academics say you should never use that word brainwashing. It does come from a literal translation of a Chinese term and lift and talks about that in his book. And so a more scholarly alternative would be words like, indoctrination or exploitation, coercion, things like that. So we talk about that in the class in this unit, my students read some chapters out of the book Cults Inside Out.

00:46:08:23 - 00:46:09:16

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

They also read several chapters out of the book, Combating Cult Mind Control. This is by another scholar named Steven Hassan.

00:46:17:00 - 00:46:46:12

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And, many psychologists will be familiar with the Bob Cialdini book Influence. Absolutely an international bestseller for years and years. So people who are familiar with the sales techniques in this book, like foot in the door, in the face, lowball, reciprocity free samples. So my students read about these sales techniques and then they apply them to how cults will recruit and indoctrinate people through, things like foot in the door.

00:46:46:14 - 00:46:46:18

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So just as an example, foot in the door is the idea that I'm going to get you to agree to something really small, like, hey, can you just, you know, stop and sign this petition that says that you care about the environment? Sure. That's easy. Takes a minute. I care about the environment. Of course. Well, now that you've stopped and you know you're signing this petition, I'm just going to have a little five-minute chat with you.

00:47:08:15 - 00:47:33:13

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And, oh, you signed my petition. I got your email. So now I'm going to start the new emails. And now I'm just going to ask you for a $5 donation. No big deal right now that I got you to donate $5. Hey, can you just volunteer one hour of your time to do a letters campaign? And I just keep, you know, snowballing, you know, and it keeps building and building and building until now.

00:47:33:13 - 00:47:50:16

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

You're in my cult, basically. Right. So it's this idea that I keep sort of ratcheting up your commitment. So they read these articles. Another really interesting, activity that I recommend is, the third activity in my class, is this activity that I have them do in my class where we think about psychology abuse that happens to cult members.

00:47:58:02 - 00:48:20:24

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So one of my areas of research is, domestic violence and relationship abuse. And so in my research, we talk about how relationship abuse isn't just physical or sexual abuse. It's psychological and emotional abuse as well. And one of the tools that we use for survivors of domestic violence and relationship abuse is called the power and control wheel.

00:48:21:01 - 00:48:46:15

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So the power and control wheel identifies forms of psychological and emotional abuse that you can see here on the screen. And if you're listening, it's things like using threats, gaslighting your partner so that they don't trust their own memories or their own perceptions, isolating them, minimizing what you've done to them. Self blame. Right? Getting the person to blame themselves for what's happening to them.

00:48:46:17 - 00:49:08:22

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

Manipulating children using economic abuse. Right. So like taking away their money, putting them on an allowance. I always like to point out when I showed this version of the power and control wheel that it says using male privilege. So in any kind of patriarchal society or group, using male privilege is saying things like, you know, any religion that has male dominance or, any kind of patriarchal group that says the men have power over women. But this is in a sexist and hetero sexist version of the wheel and of a group. So there are other versions of the wheel that are more, gender equal. So those versions of the wheel just simply say, using gender privilege so they would acknowledge more than two genders.

00:49:39:08 - 00:50:10:08

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

They have things like outing a partner without their permission or, dead, naming someone who is trans, for example. So the idea is that you've now, read about many cults, we've watched documentaries, we've read memoirs. So the activity is to have them apply these psychological and emotional abuse tactics in partnerships. You know, like in relationships and dating relationships or marriage relationships to the cults.

00:50:10:14 - 00:50:34:03

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So can you see things like gaslighting in cults? Can you see things like isolation in cults? Right. Like living on a compound. Can you see economic abuse in these cults? So it's applying these dating and marriage forms of psychological abuse in the cults. A big example of this is the sexual exploitation that many cults have over their members.

00:50:34:05 - 00:51:01:02

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So paper four is using these psychological tactics and applying them to cults. So they have to choose several of the cults that, several the tactics that we've talked about in this unit and apply them to the cults that we have talked about all semester. And again, use this APA style citations and references at the end, the last unit of class is the hopeful message.

00:51:01:02 - 00:51:25:03

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So we I try to always in my classes on this sort of positive message because many of my classes are on these kind of depressing topics like cold sore, relationship abuse or sexism. So escape and healing. So again, we read chapters from Steven Hansen's book. We talk about, the process of escape from abusive relationships. So this is one of my favorite book chapters.

00:51:25:05 - 00:52:05:20

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

It's by Rosen and Steph. And so they talk about the psychological process of getting out of an abusive relationship. And so it's things like, if I'm in an abusive relationship, I go through psychological steps to realize that, I'm in an abusive relationship to put that label on myself. So that cognitive dissonance of like, if I'm being gaslighted, for example, by my partner to realize that that's happening to me, to give myself the label of being abused, to, sort of build back my self-esteem and my confidence and to make a plan for how am I going to get out safely and then actually take those steps.

00:52:05:22 - 00:52:26:18

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So we then apply those to people who are in cults. How can I successfully get out? And then they read this book called scarred, which is about a woman who was in that that group called Nexium with Keith Ranieri, that that sex pyramid group. And you can see it in the cover of this book. She's showing her scar with Keith Ranieri's initials.

00:52:26:20 - 00:52:49:03

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So the final paper that they have in my class is a comprehensive paper where they have to choose one concept from all five units and apply it to this book that they read at the end of the class. So again, they have to provide an LA citation for the concepts, and they also have to provide a citation from the book.

00:52:49:06 - 00:53:17:18

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

So five concepts each has two citations. So total of ten citations. And then they have to provide of course their full references page at the end. So they're scaffolding those citations and those references as they go through the semester. So that's how I do my class. Hopefully, you've seen several different ideas for activities, several different ideas for papers that could be an entire semester or term, as well as just a single day or anything in between.

00:53:17:20 - 00:53:27:21

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

This is by far my most popular class. I could fill up all four classes all semester if I did it. But I'm only allowed to teach it every other semester. So thank you so much for listening to this. I really find this class very fulfilling. My main goal, of course, is to get the students excited about psychology. But also hopefully to prevent them from joining cults. So it's really, applied class. It's one that students are naturally excited and curious about. And so it's a way to really bring that love of psychology to the classroom.

00:53:52:16 - 00:54:12:19

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

And it's one that my students talk about and send me articles. Years after they've taken it. So, I hope that you have, enjoyed this talk, and I hope that you can apply it to your own classes. And please just email me if you have questions, if you want any of these resources or if you have ideas that I could potentially use in my own class.

00:54:12:19 - 00:54:22:09

Dr. Wind Goodfriend, Sage Author and Psychology Professor at Buena Vista University

I'm always looking for new ideas, new activities, new examples. So thank you so much for your time today and I hope you get something out of this. Thank you so much.