What are some of the characteristics of cult leaders that make them so successful at attracting followers, according to research studies?

 

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What are some of the characteristics of cult leaders that make them so successful at attracting followers, according to research studies?

I was in Scientology for twenty five years.

Unfortunately the people who are most confident are human predators, people with sociopathic and narcissistic traits are the most confident and we as human beings all too often accept and appoint or elect or promote people into positions of power and leadership who are in fact human predators.

Numerous experts have written on this and even written on this problem.

For reference we have a wealth of books available, such as Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It) Hardcover – March 12, 2019 by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, several books by Bill Eddy including Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths—And How We Can Stop! and 5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life: Identifying and Dealing with Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other High-Conflict Personalities by Bill Eddy explore the topic.

The Empathy Trap: Understanding Antisocial Personalities by Jane McGregor and Tim McGregor deals with the dynamics of this in depth as well. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant dives deep into the different types of people one can work with and crucial differences between them.

There is truly no end to excellent books on the topic.

To briefly mention a few of the traits that human predators exploit we have the fact that they are often hidden and so victims never expect to be lied to and exploited and abused so callously. We have what psychologists call reverse projection in which a normal person assumes that other people have the same emotions and reactions and behavior that they do and mistakenly believe that everyone is the same, deep down, which is absolutely wrong regarding human predators. They have either no empathy and compassion or so little it doesn't affect their behavior, so they are almost like another species in regards to their behavior.

We have their willingness to be able to lie effortlessly, truly shamelessly, for years and never care. We have their willingness to cause misery and chaos to create an environment in which they can control others through confusion and misdirections and tactics like gaslighting and denial and reversals of truth such as projecting their own negative qualities and behavior onto unsuspecting scapegoats and victims, sometimes just for fun, sometimes as a calculated tactic to confuse, confound, and control minds and reputations.

They have a pathology that lends itself to survival through adapting to the challenge of being a hidden enemy and needing cover and often duped and unwitting accomplices. The thing is human predators are almost always a minority of the people in any group, so they have a need to be either highly persuasive or to hide their true activities and intentions or to combine all of the above.

Like a shark that must stay under the surface and constantly move to survive, a human predator must constantly be hiding the truth about themselves and a part of their life or others would not help them and they would not survive if everyone saw their true activities and intentions and no one believed their lies or supported or protected them.