A Cult is a social group with non-mainstream beliefs or practices, often religious or social, that manipulates, controls or exploits its members. A cult is often headed by a charismatic leader.
A Conspiracy Theory is a set of non-mainstream beliefs held by individuals or very loosely associated individuals. It is characterized by a belief that a powerful secret group of people is behind most important things that happen in the world, but might focus on quite particular and obscure topics.
There is some crossover. Cults often promote conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theories often have charismatic promoters. But the main difference is that a cult is primarily about membership of a group, and a conspiracy theory is about belief in a particular world view.
As I'm writing a book on how people get out of conspiracy theory thinking, an obvious thing was to look at advice people give when talking to people in cults.
http://theconversation.com/how-to-talk-someone-out-of-a-damaging-cult-68930
Be nice to them. Keep talking to them in a way that keeps them thinking. Eventually they will figure it out.
That's a bit vague, but they say it's basically a technique known as "Motivational Interviewing"
http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/10/5/331
The language there might be a bit vague looking, but what they are talking about is how you get someone to change their behavior. The actual research behind MI seems largely related to substance abuse - where the patient may or may not want to quit (drugs, alcohol, smoking), but lacks motivation to do so.
Obviously substance addiction is not exactly like conspiracy theory belief, or even cult membership. But there are similarities. Simply watching online videos about conspiracy theories can have a similar addictive nature - people often talk about consuming large quantities of conspiracy media when they first get into it, and then being regular consumers thereafter - often getting hooked on Facebook groups, or conspiracy promoters like Alex Jones.
So maybe there are things to learn from the treatment of addicts and from cults.
One thing that leapt out to me from the "How to talk someone out of a damaging cult" was "The most important piece of advice is to not criticise, condemn or judge". This resonates with the approach here at Metabunk where I ask that people be polite (which includes being non-judgemental) in order to communicate more effectively.
Then in the more academic article we have:
Now this is more about talking in person than online, and comes across a bit more "touchy-feely" than most online interactions. But point #3 there is still about being nice to avoid confrontation.
Of course another huge difference is that with a therapy situation you've got someone who is at least thinking about making a change - they actually want to be there. The points about empathy and fostering a relationship don't directly translate to someone who is obsessed with a conspiracy theory and they might view your attempt to change their mind as suspicious.
.... to be continued
A Conspiracy Theory is a set of non-mainstream beliefs held by individuals or very loosely associated individuals. It is characterized by a belief that a powerful secret group of people is behind most important things that happen in the world, but might focus on quite particular and obscure topics.
There is some crossover. Cults often promote conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theories often have charismatic promoters. But the main difference is that a cult is primarily about membership of a group, and a conspiracy theory is about belief in a particular world view.
As I'm writing a book on how people get out of conspiracy theory thinking, an obvious thing was to look at advice people give when talking to people in cults.
http://theconversation.com/how-to-talk-someone-out-of-a-damaging-cult-68930
That's a bit vague, but they say it's basically a technique known as "Motivational Interviewing"
http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/10/5/331
Obviously substance addiction is not exactly like conspiracy theory belief, or even cult membership. But there are similarities. Simply watching online videos about conspiracy theories can have a similar addictive nature - people often talk about consuming large quantities of conspiracy media when they first get into it, and then being regular consumers thereafter - often getting hooked on Facebook groups, or conspiracy promoters like Alex Jones.
So maybe there are things to learn from the treatment of addicts and from cults.
One thing that leapt out to me from the "How to talk someone out of a damaging cult" was "The most important piece of advice is to not criticise, condemn or judge". This resonates with the approach here at Metabunk where I ask that people be polite (which includes being non-judgemental) in order to communicate more effectively.
Then in the more academic article we have:
Of course another huge difference is that with a therapy situation you've got someone who is at least thinking about making a change - they actually want to be there. The points about empathy and fostering a relationship don't directly translate to someone who is obsessed with a conspiracy theory and they might view your attempt to change their mind as suspicious.
.... to be continued
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