Who is most Vulnerable to Cults?
In truth, absolutely anyone can become a victim but they are often those individuals who are young, intelligent, and idealistic. They are most likely to be 'recruited' during a transition period in their life- when they are more vulnerable to outside coercion and manipulation.
Think you are immune? Think again. Victims of cults are lawyers, doctors, stay at home moms, celebrities, CEO's, charity workers, the homeless to millionaires and everything in between. How much money you have, how smart you are, who your parents are, what town or school you went to…none of these things matter.
The leaders of these cults are people who are "sociopaths". They are not like you and me, these are people who have no conscious, no real emotion, and no regard for others. They are driven by their need to exert power and control, and will stop at nothing in their quest to do so.
They recruit their victims slowly, using subtle techniques of psychological manipulation to win your trust and friendship. It is FACT, psychological manipulation slowly and methodically wears down your sense of self-worth, self-confidence, self-concept and trust in your own perceptions. Just like how a frog will immediately jump out of a pot of boiling water-but it will boil and die if placed in a pot of cool water that slowly heats to a boil. They are experts at analyzing you, and providing you with exactly the things you are unconsciously seeking.
Learning to recognize the personality style of manipulators is the only way to protect yourself from further abuse. Expert Philip Zimbardo says that mind control is a "process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes" and he suggests that everyone is susceptible to such manipulation.
According to Wikipedia: Philip George Zimbardo is a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He became known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment and has since authored various introductory psychology books, textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect, The Time Paradox and the The Time Cure. He is also the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project.
Next week we will discuss the various techniques these manipulators deploy on their victims.