Returning to the Stanford Prison Experiment

Ben Blum, in his article The Lifespan of a Lie, sets out to put to rest the findings of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). He suggests that the reason we have collectively embraced the lesson of the SPE—that environments strongly affect people's moral decisions—is because it lets us off the hook for bad decisions. In other words, we cannot be held accountable for immoral behavior if it was our environment, not ourselves, that caused us to act as we did.

Seemingly at variance with his viewpoint, Mr. Blum goes on to write about an attempted replication of the SPE. Emphasis added by me:

"According to Alex Haslam and Stephen Reicher, psychologists who co-directed an attempted replication of the Stanford prison experiment in Great Britain in 2001, a critical factor in making people commit atrocities is a leader assuring them that they are acting in the service of a higher moral cause with which they identify — for instance, scientific progress or prison reform. We have been taught that guards abused prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment because of the power of their roles, but Haslam and Reicher argue that their behavior arose instead from their identification with the experimenters, which Jaffe and Zimbardo encouraged at every turn. Eshleman, who described himself on an intake questionnaire as a “scientist at heart,” may have identified more powerfully than anyone, but Jaffe himself put it well in his self-evaluation: “I am startled by the ease with which I could turn off my sensitivity and concern for others for ‘a good cause.’”"

An important lesson that we can draw from the Stanford Prison Study, Haslam and Reicher's replication, Solomon Asch's experiments on the bandwagon effect, and other studies on social norming, is that people generally conform to what they think they are expected to do, and much more so when that expectation comes from an authority figure. The COG employed the highest and most absolute authority of all, God. Following the words of our "prophet," David Berg, created an upside-down, morally abhorrent, alternative reality within COG Homes and was the root of abuse and exploitation within the cult.

See also, The Power of Ideology.

The Past is for Education, not Self-Reproach

I think I am not alone in the undesirable mental habit of beating myself up for saying and doing stupid things. I woke in the night and as my mind slid into the familiar berating, I stepped aside and considered why.

My thoughts went back to my years in the Philippines. Each year on Good Friday, we see can a physical representation of this mental habit. Filipinos walk down main streets flagellating themself with whips until they collapse. Some go as far as to have themselves nailed to crosses for several hours. To my mind, this is absurd. What good can come of this?

Yet isn't that just the same thing I have been doing mentally? Self-flagellating as if it would do any good. Did it earn me merit? No.

The past is to be looked at for education, not as a breeding ground for self-reproach. Understanding, accepting, and honestly facing ourselves is vital to having compassion on others, not to mention essential for our own mental health.

To quote the Dalai Lama,

"When we treat ourselves with compassion, we accept that there are parts of our personality that we may not be satisfied with, but we do not berate ourselves as we try to address them. When we go through a difficult time we are caring and kind to ourselves, as we would be to a friend or relative. When we feel inadequate in some way, we remind ourselves that all people have these feelings or limitations. When things are hard, we recognize that all people go through similar challenges. And finally, when we are feeling down, we try to understand this feeling with curiosity and acceptance, rather than rejection or self-judgement."

See also: Guilt.

Apologies

Dear Children,

The subject of apologies is vast and overwhelming. It is probably easier to try to sift out the few things I did right from the haystack of wrongs. But that wouldn't be an apology. 

Although I have apologized privately to you and to other young people I have known over the years, I would like to make a public statement. For what it's worth, I am deeply sorry for the following:

• raising you in a toxic cult with twisted sense of normalcy
• subjecting you to reading—and memorizing—Mo Letters and the Bible in lieu of more useful books and information
• not ensuring your safety from abusive treatment
• failing to provide you with a carefree childhood
• having you pass out tracts, sell posters and tapes, and other embarrassing "witnessing" ventures
• leaving two of you as nursing babies to go away for "training," per leadership orders
• striving to be a Bible woman and thus setting a terrible example as a mother
• remaining with a man who was physically and emotionally abusive to my children, necessitating walking on eggshells to try to avoid his tirades over petty perceived offences, angry outbursts, and beatings
• raising you in a dysfunctional stressful household
• dodging confrontation instead of facing and working through the conflict
• not allowing you older ones a normal opportunity for socialization
• not ensuring you got the education you deserved
• limiting your opportunities by raising you in a foreign, rural backwater
• allowing one of you to go work for evil cult overlords who subjected you to unwanted sex, and for not insisting you come home immediately when you called me upset about being there
• and to all the young people who grew up in TFI, I am sincerely sorry for closing my eyes in denial and remaining in a cult that advocated pedophilia, child abuse, and medical and educational neglect

There are probably more things that you deserve an apology for, but they escape me now. 

In spite of me and all my failures as a mother, you have all overcome your difficult childhoods, pulled out of dark places, and have grown into mature, good-natured, intelligent adults that I am deeply proud of. 

Love,

Mom

More on Anonymity

The anonymity in the group caused by the taking of new names upon joining, isolation from society at large, social norming, and the deindividualization of groupthink was a powerful force.

I wrote before that perhaps this name changing was akin to Plato’s “Ring of Gyges.” To put this in more contemporary and perhaps more relevant terms, think of Tolkien’s “The One Ring.” Both were stories of magic rings that granted invisibility to the wearer. In Plato's Republic, he uses the story of the ring to consider whether a person would be moral if he did not have to fear being caught. In Tolkien's story, the ring also brought with its invisibility the propensity towards evil. Did the anonymity of name changing in The Family affect people’s psyches and give them further license to engage in behavior contrary to conventional morality?

Aside from this more obvious psychological process of providing a cover for amoral activity, I wonder if anonymity was a basic factor in keeping the cult together. We had new personas in the cult. We could forget who we were before joining, forget our family and friends, and forget conventional mores.

Reflecting on my teen years as a Catacomb member of the COG while still living with my parents, I see how I had had two personas—the happy cult Hepsi and the past Mary with her biological family, her friends, and problems. When my best friend called me after having been away for months, I told her about my infatuation with the Children of God. She reacted as I probably would have, had our situations been reversed. She blurted with disdain, "What? You're a Jesus Freak?!" I felt so embarrassed. But not embarrassed enough to change my mind.

I had found succour in the cult. That loving, welcoming "Family" that gave purpose to my life. I had to separate my outside self, the one my friend had known, from my cult self. Then when that friend stopped by my house to visit, I was too ashamed to answer the door. Too bad I wasn't self-aware enough to realize how my behavior betrayed my real feelings toward the COG. Although that embarrassment continued lurking in the shadows of my subconscious all my years in the cult, I repressed those "sinful doubts" and gave my all to The Children of God. And that is the real shame.

Habits of Mind

One of the habits of mind that I developed in the cult was a feeling of helplessness, of being trapped and powerless. After leaving, indeed my options were limited by my circumstances: the lack of biological family to turn to, the sheer number of my dependents, my lack of education, and my neural atrophy. For years, I did feel trapped by my circumstances, and I had little energy or time to consider alternatives.

Amor Towles put these wise words into the mouth of his protagonist in his masterpiece, A Gentleman in Moscow, "If one does not master his circumstances, one is bound to be mastered by them."

I have a past I cannot change, mistakes that cannot be undone. But I will no longer allow those circumstances of my past to master me as I had in former times.

During my cult years, I stove to submit and struggled to be a good "Bible woman" with no will of my own. I was to be a "diamond of dust" and float effortlessly on God's air. The ideal was to be mastered by outside forces—God and my Shepherds. 

In real terms, this meant I was to remain a child with no self-will. And this I did. I remained in the cult. I remained in a dysfunctional relationship. I endured unpleasant circumstances, "enduring hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." I deserved no better, or so I believed.

Through the years, this wrong thinking of helplessness had become a deeply entrenched habit of mind. More than a reflection of reality, this feeling of entrapment by circumstance was a mental habit. In order to pull out of it, first, I had to notice it. Then, I had to decide to be done with it. Finally came the day-to-day work of rewiring my brain and intuitions.

My life is mine now. Not some fairy-tale god's. Not the cult's. Not anyone else's. I am not a victim. If I feel trapped or unhappy with my situation, I need to make a plan to change it. I will earn no eternal merit through misguided martyrdom. There are no cosmic brownie points.

I choose to wake up each day with appreciation for life and freedom. With joy, not with dragging around the dregs of the past. Life is too short.

Environment can cause epidemics of evil

"You don't need a motive," Zimbardo said. "All you really need is a situation [or an ideology?] that facilitates moving across that line of good and evil." 

"What's more, a person's anonymity can be induced by acting in an anonymity-conferring environment that adds to the pleasure of destruction, vandalism and the power of being in control," Zimbardo noted.

Read the full article, "What makes good people do bad things?"

All cults are alike; each cult is unhappy in its own way

I just finished reading Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology. I had never heard of Leah Remini, never seen her on TV. I was in a cult. We didn't watch TV. Then after leaving, I had no interest in television, as I had such a hunger to study and learn after years in the intellectual desert that was life in the Children of God. Like Leah, I needed to rewire my brain. But unlike Leah, I had no support system, no therapists, no friends nor family nearby, just my own large brood of children that needed care and attention and money.

Reading Leah's story, I marveled at the similarities. Groupthink, which I.L. Janis defined as “a deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgments as a result of group pressures," is an essential feature in all cults. Scientologists, just like their COG counterparts, are “the enlightened ones,” the ones with privileged insight into The Truth. This privilege obliges members to spend hours and hours “improving themselves” through daily reading, frequent counseling, self-criticism, and criticism from leaders, with its resultant required confessions and, in the COG, united prayer sessions. Voicing doubts or criticizing leaders was cause for censure and punishment, demotion, hard-labor, humiliation, silence restriction, and/or wearing headphones listening to group publications.

I was horrified to read of the extent of the abuse that was heaped upon adults in Scientology, and its accompanying psychological warping so that the victims believe they are deserving of such ill-treatment. In the Children of God, although adults were subject to various types of abuse and constant exploitation, the real victims were the children. Especially the first generation born in the COG were subject to physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse, coupled with educational and medical neglect. Like Leah explained about Scientology, the group's publications were deemed more important than mere academic education.

Scientology, with its courting of rich and famous celebrities, is wealthy, yet the rank-and-file members can find themselves bankrupt because of the amount of money the cult requires them to pay. Children of God members lived in poverty after giving up everything to the cult, being forbidden to hold regular jobs because they were too busy “doing the work of winning the world, that only they, as the chosen of God, could do,” and tithing at least 15% of the donations they raised. The very dedicated gave more.

I feel a kindred spirit to Leah, and I commend her strength and resolve in coming out of such a strong mindset as was instilled during her formative years growing up in Scientology.

Perception and Cult Non-Apologies

True for all humanity, our value system determines our perception. This means that our beliefs, our ideas about the world, what we "know," not only colors everything we see, but actually determines what we perceive.

The world as we see it inside our heads is far from a perfect image of reality, rather it is an image formed by the emotional and informational input to which we are exposed. This image becomes a filter for incoming information, interpreting it according to our belief system. (See the Confirmation Bias.) In the cult, this was terribly damaging, causing our normal to be completely manipulated into an outwardly righteous, yet inwardly vile, abnormal.

I was reminded of this when reading The Family International's response to the recent A&E Cults and Extreme Beliefs documentary on The Children of God. "As mentioned previously, the allegations and narratives that are the focus of the program date to over 30 years ago and were addressed in the mid- to late-1980s... Although the Family International has apologized on a number of occasions to former members for any hurt, real or perceived, that they may have experienced during their membership, we do not give credence to tales of institutionalized abuse told by those who seek to promote their personal agendas or causes, or for financial gain."

This is galling. The Family International seems to view the thousands of young people who were directly and deeply harmed by the practices and doctrines presented as from God by David Berg and Karen Zerby as disgruntled losers who can't move on, or whiny people hung up on the past hoping to make a quick buck on sensationalizing their childhood experiences in the cult.

Does The Family International leadership not realize that it is against media policy in the U.S. to be paid to give an interview? There was no financial gain.

Are The Family International leadership not willing to consider that maybe the reason these second generation ex-members keep on speaking out is because of the lack of closure? The lack of sincere apology? The lack of admission of guilt? The unwillingness to help make amends?

Surely The Family International leadership does not see this. To them, "All things work together for good,"* and if those second generation people who "claim" to have been abused would just accept the Lord's hand in their lives, they could "forget those things which are behind"** and move on with the Lord. 

I can see no other explanation for TFI's leadership's utter lack of compassion for the thousands of second generation ex-members who suffered educational, medical, physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse throughout their formative years, and for the hundreds who took their own lives out of despair.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

*Romans 8:28

**Philippians 3:13

Finding Balance

An older man stepped into the small jacuzzi where I was relaxing after my swim. In spite of showering, the acrid aroma of his stale aftershave along with the residual reek of tobacco obtruded into the steamy air.

I wonder if he's tried to quit? I mused. Surely doctors would have told him to. I guessed his age at maybe somewhere in his 60's or 70's. My imagination stretched into further assumptions, Perhaps he has smoked since his youth. I suppose he enjoys this vice to which he is captive.

Captivity is something I could relate to. I had allowed myself to be psychologically captive to a cult for too many years, and I now loathe the thought of being captive to a vice. Then my mind took another leap.

Vice or not, depending on your perspective, people denied pleasure in a repressive society can easily jump on the treadmill of hedonism, not unlike preacher's kid syndrome. One luxury that brings exultation soon becomes normalized. Then, like a junkie looking for his next fix, the search for the next novelty begins. When that is found, the initial rush fades all too quickly and the item or experience becomes mundane, the behavior habituated. (Habituation put simply: Why the fifth bite of your favorite dish never tastes as good as the first.)

On the cycle goes. Endless.

Walking hand-in-hand with hedonism is the avoidance of pain and the rejection of any negativity. This brings to mind the hackneyed, "get rid of negative energy from your life." I would call it denial. Life is not a bed of thornless roses.

The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, in The Book of Joy, describe eudaimonic happiness which is born from self-understanding, growth, and acceptance of life's joys and sufferings, sadness, and grief. To me, this seems a more realistic approach to life and happiness.

May I never again forfeit my freedom and self-determination to live in a dream world again. 

(See The Experience Machine for the ultimate in hedonism.)

Explanations are Impossible

Answering innocent questions can be difficult.

Q: What were you doing in the tropics for so many years? 

Me: Uh. I was in a cult, following the teachings of a madman.
No, that won't do. 
I did volunteer work. 

Q: Cool! Volunteer work! What exactly did you do? Did you work in the slums?

Me: I was a childcare worker, maid, and FFer. For some reason, I don't think they'd understand that.
I mainly taught the kids of other volunteers.

Q: So you were a teacher in Japan, right? Where did you teach?

Me: At enormous Combo Homes caring for large groups of children 24/7 and working myself to exhaustion and nervous breakdown, all while struggling against sin and self in my striving to learn "submission." 
At a private international school.

Q: What was it called? Would I know it? What train line was it on?

Me: Should I say The Heavenly City School? No, that's going to sound nuts. I have no idea what train line anything was on. I never went out. 
It doesn't exist anymore.

Q: Have you been to [insert any sightseeing or famous destination in any of the countries where I lived]?

Me: No, I was busy at home.

uh....

That life was inexplicable. Please don't ask me any more questions.

Regaining Confidence

I did something that caused a positive ripple effect.

Upon realizing that, immediately cult-inculcated intuitive thoughts flooded my mind: It must have been the Lord. He must have worked that out behind the scenes. He worked through me to accomplish this. It's only Jesus. What a miracle that He could work through one so unworthy as I.

I'm not falling for that again. No more will I rob myself of an opportunity to strengthen my self-esteem. I am going to pat myself on the back and accept that I had a good idea and acted on it.

Yay, me.

Agreeableness

Agree and appease. That was my MO when it came to any conflict. Not taking a stand when faced with anger and abuse is high-ranking among my regrets. "Let's pray," was my go-to, like an alcoholic turning to the bottle when discord arose. Nod head in agreement, sweep problem under the rug, and hope it goes away.

Listening to a lecture by Jordan Peterson, I learned that agreeableness is a natural outgrowth of motherhood. We mothers are wired to be exploited — by infants. We jump when our infant cries, laying our own desires aside without a second thought. We strive to surround our babies with a calm atmosphere, to protect them, so instead of directly addressing conflict, we smooth the waters and keep things calm. This short-term solution is a poor technique for dealing with adults. It sets us up for exploitation, hard work, and low pay.

Now that my children are grown, I realize it's time for me to grow up, too. I need to decide what I want out of the years I have left on this earth, and I need to leave behind my habit of always putting others first which has made me vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. 

Although it's been a challenge to find a sense of my own desires, one is crystal clear. I want to learn.

Why didn't we balk at the Mo Letters?

How could I have been OK with the Mo Letters? They were blatantly horrible and overflowed with delusions of grandeur. The cover art was more than cringe-worthy, the writing was embarrassingly juvenile, and the overuse of all caps, underlining, and exclamation points was inane. How is it that we cult members didn't think about our future children looking at them and concluding their parents had been idiots for believing such nonsense?

When I ponder the stranger who is my past self, I marvel. I naturally look back through the filter of my present views, but nevertheless, I remember being embarrassed by the Mo Letters and hoping no outsiders would see the most atrocious ones, but that shame didn't wake me up. Why not?

It was a surprisingly quick slide into the depths of delusion. Upon joining, a requisite was to accept that we were "babes in Christ" and needed retraining in the ways of the Lord. Berg was our "father in the Lord," and on top of that, we were taught he was the Endtime prophet prophesied in the Bible. (Hosea 3:5, Ezekiel 34:11, 23, 24, and Ezekiel 37:24)

Once that foundation of belief was in place it was reinforced by required daily reading of Berg's Letters. By and by, our brains were prepared to accept whatever came from him as the gospel truth. We were to be "new bottles," willing to accept the "new wine that God was giving" through Berg, and not like "unrevolutionary" Christians who he disparaged as "old bottles," the title of a Mo Letter written in 1973. "Old bottle" became a byword in the cult for those who did not eagerly accept the new Mo Letters. Social norming—and harsh corrections—dictated that no one wanted to be accused of that.

In 1975, Berg took this to a higher level with the publication of the Mo Letter, "Strange Truths." In it, he recounted a dream about a fountain of water that he had discovered, symbolic of his source of “the words of life” from God. Strange creatures lived in the water, which some people liked and others looked on with suspicion. Berg concluded that the creatures must be good since they came from “the source” (God), and that people who didn't like them “because they were contrary to their ideas of what the water [the Word] ought to be like” left the fold. Shame on them! Thus the tone was set for the acceptance of Berg's Letters, no matter how strange we thought they were, because they all came from the source of Truth—Berg with his hotline to God.

As the years passed, in obedience to Berg's decrees, the number of people in our communal Homes grew, which exponentially intensified the ingrained human tendency towards group conformity and obedience. (See studies done by Solomon Asch; larger numbers greatly increase the conforming power of a group.)

Complementing the basic premise of accepting any bizarre idea that came from "the source" was our constant state of busyness, giving us no time to raise our heads and think about our situations. I worked to the point of nervous breakdowns in large School Homes, filled to the brim with children packed two to a bed in three-tier bunks. How to educate and care for them, with basically no money and always short-handed, was my ever-present concern—and we always seemed to be playing catch-up.

As if the physical work wasn't enough, like all plebeian members, I lived under the burden of responsibility for righting my sorry spiritual state. I needed to learn "submission" to God, my leaders, and to my husband—to be a good "Bible woman." I was often called in for "talks" with the leaders, excoriating corrections for my many "sins."

My mental bandwidth was taken up with marriage problems, children's needs, my own spiritual inadequacies that I needed to conquer, lack of money, and constant work. When the mind is running multiple programs, our mental processors begin to slow down. I didn't have enough time to take care of all the needs before me, let alone think about the future, or "give place to the devil" by "doubting" the Mo Letters.

We were exhorted to live in the present and "take no thought for the morrow." We had an absolute disconnect from our future selves, and an absolute lack of foresight into our children's or our own futures. Worse, the groupthink of the cult resulted in the deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgments. Thinking was out, the "joy of the Lord" was in.

In the Stanford Prison Study, I wrote that when those volunteers who had played the role of guards looked back on the six days of the study, they were alarmed at what they had been capable of doing. Perhaps even more telling is that those who had been prisoners were also dismayed at their behavior—at how quickly they had been broken into passivity.

The architect of the study, Philip Zimbardo, stated that the issue isn't how a few bad apples can ruin the whole barrel; it's how a bad barrel can turn any apple bad. Situations matter. Average people can, and often will, go along with absurdly incorrect assertions and do stunningly bad things in the name of obedience and conformity. (Hello, Abu Ghraib.)

The cult was the perfect setup for mindless conformity, and that conformity included acceptance of the Mo Letters.

See also: Motivational Influences on Perception