Thought Reform: Six Necessary Conditions
Submitted by Les Stewart on Mon, 2008/04/14 - 07:52.
Margaret Thaler Singer (1921-2003) wrote Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives in 1995. It is an important contribution to this much misunderstood area of psychology. These conditions were lifted directly from the International Cultic Studies Association.
I might suggest reading each condition carefully and noting if any of this relates to your experience before, during and after running a franchise. Note the role of deception, information control and manufactured passivity.
- Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time. Potential new members are led, step by step, through a behavioral-change program without being aware of the final agenda or full content of the group. The goal may be to make them deployable agents for the leadership, to get them to buy more courses, or get them to make a deeper commitment, depending on the leader's aim and desires.
- Control the person's social and/or physical environment; especially control the person's time. Through various methods, newer members are kept busy and led to think about the group and its content during as much of their waking time as possible.
- Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person. This is accomplished by getting members away from the normal social support group for a period of time and into an environment where the majority of people are already group members. The members serve as models of the attitudes and behaviors of the group and speak an in-group language.
- Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person's former social identity. Manipulation of experiences can be accomplished through various methods of trance induction, including leaders using such techniques as paced speaking patterns, guided imagery, chanting, long prayer sessions or lectures, and lengthy meditation sessions.
- Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group's ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors. Good behavior, demonstrating an understanding and acceptance of the group's beliefs, and compliance are rewarded while questioning, expressing doubts or criticizing are met with disapproval, redress and possible rejection. If one expresses a question, he or she is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to be questioning.
- Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order. The group has a top-down, pyramid structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing. (Singer, 1995).
Les
Are you saying franchises may be using these concepts in their empire?
Like most recent is the El Dorado cult in Texas. Where women are treated as property of their husband. Even marrying in their teens with 50 year old men.
The feeling to belong is so strong that many will resort to becoming a part of a cult. I have seen cult like situations in my life time. The leader claims to be put there by God. His word is God's word. It is amazing how people will submit to whatever the leader says. Women really believe they must submit to their husbands. If they don't they are going against God.
This situation was part of my family. So I know first hand how it is done. The leader never worked yet had control of many of the members. He lived like a king. Traveled the world to do his calling. He died at fifty because he ate himself to death. Yet he believed by using sales techniques you can bring people to God. Many people believed it was easier to live life because the leader makes all the decisions. People do not have to think.
Techniques: Good of Ill Use
Do,
With any degree of objectivity, you can clearly observe these persuasion and control techniques actively being used in franchising. These clusters of behaviors together constitute a type of persuasion technology or more commonly called "brainwashing".
The bio-electrical circuits of everyone's body can be manipulated by controlling the physical environment, reward & punishments, etc.
We are much more susceptible to influence than we commonly believe. We have an overconfidence bias in our abilities to resist and our skills in being successful.
Les Stewart MBA
Understanding Franchising
Persuasion technology
commonly called "brainwashing." It makes sense Les. Everyone should read your blog. I do believe we are more susceptible to influence then we know.