This article is an electronic version of an article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 1995, Volume 12, Number 1, pages 49-71. Please keep in mind that the pagination of this electronic reprint differs from that of the bound volume. This fact could affect how you enter bibliographic information in papers that you may write.

Expanding the Groupthink Explanation to the Study of Contemporary Cults

Mark N. Wexler, Ph.D.

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 (1) how cult leaders, through the use of ordeals, draws a loyal, elite group of decision makers about them, (2) 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, (3) how the decision elite are imbued with the virtue of infallibility and how this is used to create enthusiastic conformity in cult members, and (4) 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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