Question

The desire for stability, involvement, belief, and conformity can have a dark side. Consider how mechanisms of social control, narrowly conceived, an support new religious, political, and psychological cults or sects. How does social control theory help explain the attractions to Heaven's Gate, the Aum Shinrikyo, the Order of the Solar Temple, or the Branch Davidians?

Answer 1

social control theory leading to formation of cults

Cults or sects have been posing problems such as criminal activities, input of heretical beliefs, intriguing on a political format, financial irregularities, se-xual perversion, child abhssm medical quackery along with employment of the brainwashing techniques to control minds of people. These cults have been responsible in construction of social images which would be existing in the form of reality that is independent of the volition of an individual person. There is build up of social reality that forms creation of a subjective character as well as objective character in the form of stable structures.

The leaders of these cults keep proclaiming their beliefs, with attribution of special names to their communities and identification of a distinguishable feature and the members of these cults would be behaving in manners that distinguish them from members of the society in the form of recognisable entities.

These members not only create their image but also tend to transmit this image to other non cult members. With the differences in perceptions of individuals, there occur differences in depiction of the whole truth leading to alternative depictions. There occurs selection in people with formation of image as to what is correct or incorrect and manipulation so as to include more and more people in the cult.