Does anyone know where I could find this list of questions?
Steven Hassan: questions to ask any group to determine if they are a cult
by Check_Your_Premises 9 Replies latest jw experiences
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undercover
I couldn't find a "list of questions" but here's the BITE method used by Hassan:
(I've highlighted what I think applies to JWs)
The BITE Analysis:
Ways to Evaluate a Group's Control
Over Personal Freedomby Steven Hassan, M. Ed., LMHC
Table of Contents
Introduction
Destructive mind control can be understood in terms of four basic components, which form the acronym BITE:
I. Behavior Control
II. Information Control
III. Thought Control
IV. Emotional ControlThese four components are guidelines. Not all groups do every aspect or do them extremely. What matters most is the overall impact on a person's free will and ability to make real choices. A person's uniqueness, talents, skills, creativity, and free will should be encouraged, not suppressed. Destructive mind control seeks to "make people over" in the image of the cult leader. This process has been described as "cloning". This "cult identity" is the result of a systematic process to dissociate a person from his or her previous identity including important beliefs and values as well as significant relationships. The result is the creation of a dual identity, what I refer to "John-John" and "John cult-member".
I. Behavior Control
- Regulation of individual's physical reality
- Where, how and with whom the member
lives andassociates with - What clothes,
colors, hairstyles the person wears - What food the person eats, drinks, adopts, and rejects
- How much sleep the person is able to have
- Financial dependence
- Little or no time spent on leisure, entertainment, vacations
- Major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals
- Need to ask permission for major decisions
- Need to report thoughts, feelings and activities to superiors
- Rewards and punishments (behavior modification techniques- positive and negative).
- Individualism discouraged; group think prevails
- Rigid rules and regulations
- Need for obedience and dependency
II. Information Control
- Use of deception
- Deliberately holding back information
- Distorting information to make it acceptable
- Outright lying
- Access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged
- Books, articles, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio
- Critical information
- Former members
- Keep members so busy they don't have time to think
- Compartmentalization of information; Outsider vs. Insider doctrines
- Information is not freely accessible
- Information varies at different levels and missions within pyramid
- Leadership decides who "needs to know" what
- Spying on other members is encouraged
- Pairing up with "buddy" system to monitor and control
- Reporting deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership
- Extensive use of cult generated information and propaganda
- Newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.
- Misquotations, statements taken out of context from non-cult sources
- Unethical use of confession
- Information about "sins" used to abolish identity boundaries
- Past "sins" used to manipulate and control; no forgiveness or absolution
III. Thought Control
- Need to internalize the group's doctrine as "Truth"
- Map = Reality
- Black and White thinking
- Good vs. evil
- Us vs. them (inside vs. outside)
- Adopt "loaded" language (characterized by "thought-terminating clichés"). Words are the tools we use to think with. These "special" words constrict rather than expand understanding. They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, platitudinous "buzz words".
- Only "good" and "proper" thoughts are encouraged.
- Thought-stopping techniques (to shut down "reality testing" by stopping "negative" thoughts and allowing only "good" thoughts); rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism.
- Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking
- Chanting
- Meditating
- Praying
- Speaking in "tongues"
- Singing or humming
- No critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate
- No alternative belief systems viewed as legitimate, good, or useful
IV. Emotional Control
- Manipulate and narrow the range of a person's feelings.
- Make the person feel like if there are ever any problems it is always their fault, never the leader's or the group's.
- Excessive use of guilt
- Identity guilt
- Who you are (not living up to your potential)
- Your family
- Your past
- Your affiliations
- Your thoughts, feelings, actions
- Social guilt
- Historical guilt
- Excessive use of fear
- Fear of thinking independently
- Fear of the "outside" world
- Fear of enemies
- Fear of losing one's "salvation"
- Fear of leaving the group or being shunned by group
- Fear of disapproval
- Extremes of emotional highs and lows.
- Ritual and often public confession of "sins".
- Phobia indoctrination: programming of irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority. The person under mind control cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group.
- No happiness or fulfillment "outside"of the group
- Terrible consequences will take place if you leave: "hell"; "demon possession"; "incurable diseases"; "accidents"; "suicide"; "insanity"; "10,000 reincarnations"; etc.
- Shunning of leave takers. Fear of being rejected by friends, peers, and family.
- Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group's perspective, people who leave are: "weak"; "undisciplined"; "unspiritual"; "worldly"; "brainwashed by family, counselors"; seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.
- Regulation of individual's physical reality
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hubert
You forgot to highlight "Use of deception". IMO.
ie: misleading new converts in Bible study.
Hubert
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undercover
You forgot to highlight "Use of deception". IMO.
I agree that they use deception. I didn't really forget to highlight. I had a reason.
When I first looked over this and highlighted the areas that I thought applied I was trying to just highlight areas where one could go to the publications and prove that they actually do those things. Deception has to be proved in various ways. I wanted to be able to look at the list and say "yep, JWs do this...it's in the WT". There are a couple of others that I highlighted that would fall under the same category as "deception" maybe but that I thought they would be easier to prove than the deception category.
Just my own goofy logic I guess.
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Qcmbr
Have to say though - this would all have applied to the new 'Christians' following the charismatic Jesus many years ago. The danger of labelling anything/body (including cults) is it actually says more about us than it does about them. To clarify my point- a believeing JW is not 'blind', 'stupid' , 'emotionally crippled' , a cult member etc.. if we believe 'they' are its our personal world view we are trying to impose on 'them' just as much as 'they' are trying to impose their own view on others. In other words not all JWs are nuts, not all Mormons are incredibly gorgeous and cute, not all Brits have wonky teeth (oh hang on ..) - I just like this site because everyone has the chance to be individual - surely labelling is one thing we're trying to say 'cya' to ????????
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seattleniceguy
Hi Qcmbr,
I think that the list provided above is intended to be applied to the organization and culture, not to any particular individuals inside it.
SNG
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Hyghlandyr
Dang, that sounds like most religions.
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M.J.
Methods of influence are not unique to "brainwashing cults". The kicker is really the degree of influence promoted in a particular setting, not so much the category. It's a sliding scale which can be evaluated within any social context, including abusive relationships, etc. When a person or group imposes influence to such a degree that it essentially regulates all these facets of a persons psyche (behavior, information, thoughts, emotions), then it can be said that it is exerting "undue influence" or "coercive persuasion".
Here's a chart I found helpful:
Continuum of InfluenceEducation Advertising Propaganda Indoctrination Thought Control Relationship & Exchange Limited consensual relationship; logical thinking is encouraged. Instruction & emotional manipulation which target can ignore. An authority attempts to persuade the masses. Authoritarian & hierarchical but also consensual & contractual. Authoritarian, hierarchical, without target awareness, for indefinite time. Deceptiveness Infrequently deceptive if teacher has no agenda. Selective information, sometimes deceptive. Exaggeration, selective, may be deceptive. Infrequently intentionally deceptive, often selective. Deceptive. Methods Instructional; indoctrination can occur when the teacher has an agenda. Mild to heavy persuasion. Heavy persuasion, compliance tactics. Coercive compliance (punishment) condoned. Unethical program of influence. Goals Productive & capable citizenry, actualization. Indoctrination, if an agenda exists. Sale of product or service. Political power & control. A cohesive & effective group. Perpetuation of the group for money or power. -
blondie
http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm
AFF now ICSA
Mind-Manipulating Groups:
The following statements, compiled by Dr. Michael Langone, editor of Cultic Studies Journal, often characterize manipulative groups. Comparing these statements to the group with which you or a family member is involved may help you determine if this involvement is cause for concern. Place a checkmark beside all items that characterize the group in question. If you check many of these items, and particularly if you check most of them, you might consider examining the group more closely.
Are you or a Family Member a Victim?Keep in mind that this checklist is meant to stimulate thought, not "diagnose" groups.
We suggest that you check all characteristics that apply to your or your loved one's group, then print this browser page for future reference. You may find that your assessment changes over time, with further reading and research.
The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).
The group has a polarized us- versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.
The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).
The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members
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Abaddon
undercover
I'd highlight a few more...
Need to ask permission for major decisions
I'd actually say there is continual council about following socity guidelines when making major decisions and if you're unsure of asking the Elders. Not a 'statutory' need to ask, but a cultivated one.
Rewards and punishments (behavior modification techniques- positive and negative).
There's loads of them, from taking away responsibilities onwards. All documentable.
Use of deception
There have been alterations made to the copy of WT magazines in bound volumes compared to the original. It is never noted or commented on. That's provable deception.
Information varies at different levels and missions within pyramid.
Yup. Elder's keep their affairs to themselves...
Leadership decides who "needs to know" what
Yup, we've never been told about Mexican marching cards by the Society.
Map = Reality
As in if it's in the societies publications it is right?
... "demon possession";"suicide"; "insanity";
All have been cited as example of risks suffered by those who leave, in publications.
I find I see more areas where Witnesess conform to the descriptions each time I look at them; when I first looked at the book (Combatting Cult Mind Control) in about 1994 or 5, at first I'd only conceed the really obvious ones!
:-)