Cults that fall beneath the public eye, the more serious the fear of cults become.

Much of this fear has been sparked by major cult related incidents such as mass suicide by the People’s Temple or the murder of Sharon Tate. These incidents, and incidents like them, grab the nation’s attention and create widespread panic. But as the nation reads about these stories in the paper, the same questions seem to surface. Questions like “How does this

There was a lot of research that was done not on this topic but on the techniques used by Jones that may help you to better understand how Jones as able to manipulate those people in such drastic measures. Such as, the foot-in-the-door phenomenon “ the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request”. Psychologist Robert Ornstein (1991) recall Jones explaining his recruitment successes, Jones operators would ask visitors to help out for about five minutes by folding and mailing envelopes. With in a week they came back to do even more work. Muzafer Sherif (1935,1937) performed an experiment to observe the emergence of a social norm, he put a person in a room by themselves and asked the person to guess how far a line moved, but when that person was asked to do the same thing while in the room with other people their answer change so that it could be close to other peoples number because he believed they must be right and I am wrong. When in fact the line never moved at all. Sherifs lesson of that experiment was to prove that: Our views of reality are not ours alone. Just as the people of “Peoples Temple” some individuals may not agree with all that Jones teaching but since it seemed that everyone else agreed it must be right. The Milgrams (Obedience experiment 1965,1974) on what happens when the demands of authority clash with the demands of conscience was another study that relates to this topic as well. Even when the teacher began to hear the learner yell of pain they continued to continue with the shocks when the authority figure expressed the importance to continue. Although many of the teachers showed signs of agony they still continued with the experiment. His study also proved that when the authority figure is physically close, compliance increases. “ If a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town” (Stanley Milgrim, on CBS, Sixty Minutes, 1979). The same for the followers in “Peoples Temple” even though they may not have agreed with everything Jones wanted them to do, he made sure his presents was always known and around. Even when some the person in the camp thought that what was going on was wrong when they expressed it Jones stressed the importance of his belief and pushed them against their norms. Stressing the importance of their religion and practice.

in one building for what they thought would be an announcement by Jones regarding the success of the Congressman's visit. Instead, Jones made the

Coping with Cults outlines a very general method of the brainwashing process. The method is as follows: “Isolate the person and manipulate his or her environment. Control the channels of information and communication. Wear the person down though inadequate diet and fatigue. Replace uncertainty, fear, and

Although criticism of the Peoples Temple existed, the membership steadily grew. At this point Jones fully displayed what could be considered anti-religion ideals, which he possessed. He claimed the Bible was filled with lies and contradictions. Another practice of the Temple was that of Catharsis. Although this practice was mostly eliminated after the migration to Jonestown, it was used while the Temple

extensive screening procedures built into the Temple admission policy such that those who received the status of true "members" accepted all of his philosophy without objection. In their minds, this philosophy was entirely correct and without

in Jones' own view, and the hypocrisy of white Christianity was ridiculed while 'apostolic socialism' was preached." It was an interracial congregation --

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