Love bombing is the deliberate show of affection or friendship by an individual or a group of people toward another individual. Critics have asserted that this action may be motivated in part by the desire to recruit or otherwise influence. Recruit (from the French recrue, from the verb recroître to grow again, i. ... Influence Science and Practice (ISBN 0321188950) is a Psychology book examining the key ways people can be influenced by Compliance Professionals. The books authors is Robert B. Cialdini, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University. ...

As of 2005, the phrase can be used in two slightly different ways. Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

• Members of the Unification Church, and perhaps members of other groups, use or have used the phrase themselves to mean a genuine expression of friendship, fellowship, interest, or concern.
• Critics of "cults" use the phrase with the implication that the "love" is feigned and the practice is manipulative. "Love bombing" is often cited by critics as one of the methods used by some cults to recruit and retain members.

The Unification Church is a new religious movement started by Sun Myung Moon in Korea in the 1940s. ...

History of term

The term was used within, and is often associated with, the Unification Church, especially the San Francisco Bay area church known as the "Oakland family." In 1999 testimony to the Maryland Cult Task Force, Ronald Loomis, Director of Education for the International Cultic Studies Association, reflecting his belief that the term was not invented by critics, asserted: "We did not make up this term. The term 'love bombing' originated with the Unification Church, the Moonies. It’s their term. Another group that’s active on many Maryland campuses, the International Churches of Christ, also uses that term."^[1] The Unification Church is a new religious movement started by Sun Myung Moon in Korea in the 1940s. ... The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is: ... an interdisciplinary network of academicians, professionals, former group members, and families who study and educate the public about social-psychological influence and control, authoritarianism, and zealotry in cultic groups, alternative movements, and other environments. ...

Though the term was already widely used by the media at the time, the Unification Church used it at least as early as 1978. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, used the term "love bomb" in a July 23, 1978 speech (translated): Sun Myung Moon in 2005. ...

Unification Church members are smiling all of the time, even at four in the morning. The man who is full of love must live that way. When you go out witnessing you can caress the wall and say that it can expect you to witness well and be smiling when you return. What face could better represent love than a smiling face? This is why we talk about love bomb; Moonies have that kind of happy problem.^[2]

"Love bombing" by Unification Church members has reportedly influenced recruits to prolong a visit to Unification Church centers or camps. Church opponents criticize the practice as contrived; more severe critics condemn it as manipulation and, when used, an insidious element of mind control. Based on his own personal experience as a Unification Church member, Steven Hassan describes the process of "love bombing" in his book Combatting Cult Mind Control. The word manipulation can refer to: Joint manipulation Social influence Sleight of hand tricks in magic or XCM. Abuse Advertising Brainwashing Charisma Fraud Indoctrination Love bombing Machiavellianism Media manipulation Mind control Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) Propaganda Social psychology Puppeteer Photo manipulation Categories: | | ... Mind control (or thought control) has the premise that an outside source can control an individuals thinking, behavior or consciousness (either directly or more subtly). ... Steven Alan Hassan (1954 - ) is a licensed mental health counselor and an exit counselor. ... Combatting Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults is an non-fiction by Steven Hassan. ...

Former members of the Children of God, including Deborah Davis, daughter of the founder of the Children of God,^[3] and Kristina Jones, daughter of an early member,^[4] have used the term in describing that organization's early days. The Children of God (COG), later known as the Family of Love, the Family, and now the Family International (TFI), is a new religious movement, widely referred to as a cult by the media and some government organizations, that started in 1968 in Huntington Beach, California, United States. ... Deborah Davis {could use a disambiguation page} 1) Deborah Davis wrote an unauthorized biography, Katharine the Great, about Katharine Graham, owner-publisher of the The first edition (Harcourt Brace, 1979) print run of 25,000 copies had barely entered bookstores when Graham was able to get it recalled and all...

Criticism of love bombing and response

Critics of "cults" often cite love bombing as one of the features that may identify an organization as a "cult." When used by critics, the phrase is defined to mean affection that is feigned or at least not entirely sincere and that is used to reduce the subject's resistance to recruitment.^[5] This article does not discuss cult in its original meaning. ...

The term was popularized by psychology professor Margaret Singer, who has become closely identified with the love-bombing-as-brainwashing point of view.^[6] She used the term in 1981 when testifying in a lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Mail. (The Unification Church had sued the newspaper for libel, in regard to stories the newspaper had published about David Adler's experiences with the church).^[7] In her testimony Singer said that she had interviewed over five hundred members of various sects, about half of them members of the Unification Church. She said that the church's use of a showering of intense affection was more effective than the brainwashing techniques used by the North Koreans on prisoners of war. In a 1996 book entitled Cults in Our Midst, she described the technique thus: Margaret Thaler Singer (1921 - 2003) was a clinical psychologist and emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Dr. Singer was born in Denver and received her bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Denver. ... The Daily Mail is a British newspaper and the oldest tabloid, first published in 1896. ... The Unification Church is a new religious movement started by Sun Myung Moon in Korea in the 1940s. ... David Adler (born January 3, 1882 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, died September 27, 1949 in Libertyville, Illinois) was a prolific architect, designing over 200 buildings. ... Brainwashing (also known as thought reform or re-education) consists of any systematic effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and beliefs in a person against his/her will, usually beliefs in conflict with the persons prior beliefs and knowledge. ... North Korea, officially the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK; Korean: Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk; Hangul: 조선민주주의인민공화국; Hanja: 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國), is a country in eastern Asia...

As soon as any interest is shown by the recruits, they may be love bombed by the recruiter or other cult members. This process of feigning friendship and interest in the recruit was originally associated with one of the early youth cults, but soon it was taken up by a number of groups as part of their program for luring people in. Love bombing is a coordinated effort, usually under the direction of leadership, that involves long-term members' flooding recruits and newer members with flattery, verbal seduction, affectionate but usually nonsexual touching, and lots of attention to their every remark. Love bombing - or the offer of instant companionship - is a deceptive ploy accounting for many successful recruitment drives.^[8]

This view of love bombing is strongly rejected by the groups involved, who take exception to the assertions that the interest and friendship are "feigned," that it is a "coordinated effort," that it amounts to "verbal seduction," that it is "part of [a] program for luring people in," or that it is a "deceptive ploy."

Damian Anderson, member of the Unification Church and prominent promoter of it on the Internet writes:

One man's love-bombing is another man's being showered with attention. Everyone likes such care and attention, so it is unfortunate that when we love as Jesus taught us to love, that we are then accused of having ulterior motives.^[9]

Proposal by Keith Henson

Electrical engineer and anti-Scientology activist Keith Henson has proposed a model based on Evolutionary psychology to explain the mechanism by which love bombing works. It is based on the idea that the brain has developed in a social context and that approval from others acts as an incentive to engage in learned behaviors that the group favors. Doctrine Practices Concepts People Public outreach Organization Controversy Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by American pulp fiction author L. Ron Hubbard in 1952 as an outgrowth of his earlier self-help system, Dianetics. ... Howard Keith Henson (b. ... Evolutionary psychology (abbreviated EP) is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i. ... Look up Motivation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

"It should come as no surprise that this powerful reward mechanism can be taken over by drug-induced rewards, but this is not the only way the brain reward system can be hijacked. Memes . . . which manifest as cults and related social movements, have "discovered" the brain's reward system as well. Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors. Tripping the detectors causes the release of reward chemicals . . . . Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.^[10] A reward is something that an animal will work to obtain, for example, food. ... Meme, (rhymes with cream and comes from Greek root with the meaning of memory and its derivative mimeme), is the term given to a unit of information that replicates from brains and inanimate stores of information, such as books and computers, to other brains or stores of information. ...

Dr. Hans Breiter, a neuroscientist at Harvard, states that "Some people seem to be born with vulnerable dopamine systems that get hijacked by social rewards."^[11] For other uses, see Dopamine (disambiguation). ...

This article does not discuss cult in its original meaning. ... A cult apologist is a term to describe a scholar of cults and/or new religious movements perceived as responding to the movements they study with advocacy instead of with neutral scholarship. ... In many countries there exists a separation of church and state and freedom of religion. ... A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a countrys leader uses mass media to create a larger-than-life public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. ... Cult suicide is that phenomenon by which some cults, have led to their membership committing suicide. ... A cult-watching group (CWG) is an organized or grass-roots assemblage of people who observe and comment on the largely marginal, often unpopular new religious movements which are often labeled cults. These groups generally fall into the following categories: anti-cult (movement) - Accuses NRMs of using mind control to... The term destructive cult (sometimes called doomsday cult) is sometimes used to refer to that small number of religious groups that have intentionally killed people, either the group members themselves or others outside of the group. ... Political cult is a term used to describe some groups on what is generally considered to be the political fringe. ... Contents: Top - 0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Steven Hassan Flo Conway Janja Lalich Michael Langone Thomas Lardeur[1] Jim Siegelman Margaret Singer Madeleine Landau Tobias Cult Education... Cults and new religious movements have been used as a theme or subject in literature and popular culture, while notable representatives of such groups and their followers have produced on their own a large body of literary works. ... This list include groups that have been referred to as cults in official government reports. ... This list indexes a diverse set of groups and organizations indicated in the popular press and elsewhere as a cult or a sect. Inclusion is based on a single reference: as a cult directly in North American English, a sect in British English or any equivalent foreign-language word; as... This list includes academic and government researchers and groups studying new religious movements and cults. ... The Cult Awareness and Information Centre is an organization that provides resources and information on groups they identify as cults and other controversial groups, based in Brisbane, Australia. ... Cult Awareness Network - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... CESNUR is a center for studies on new religions, based in Turin, Italy. ... The Cult Information Centre (CIC) is a Britain-based organization that provides information and advice to members of what the organization terms as cults, as well as affected family members[1], members of the press and scholarly researchers. ... The Council on Mind Abuse (COMA) was a Canadian non-profit organization promoting education about cults from 1979 to 1992. ... The Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, or FACTNet, is a Colorado-based organization committed to educating and facilitating communication about destructive mind control. ... European Federation of Centers of Research and Information on Sectarism was founded on 30 June 1994 in Paris following the Congress on Sectarianism in Barcelona in 1993. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is: ... an interdisciplinary network of academicians, professionals, former group members, and families who study and educate the public about social-psychological influence and control, authoritarianism, and zealotry in cultic groups, alternative movements, and other environments. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... Reachout Trust is an evangelical Christian organisation. ... Wellspring Retreat and Resource Center is a residential counseling center specializing in the treatment of individuals who have suffered in abusive religious groups, organizations, and cults. ... It has been suggested that Opposition to cults and new religious movements be merged into this article or section. ... The Christian countercult movement, also known as discernment ministries is the collective designation for many mostly unrelated ministries and individual Christians who oppose non-mainstream Christian and non-Christian religious groups, which they often call cults. ... Opposition to cults and new religious movements (NRMs) comes from several sources with diverse concerns. ... The APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC) was formed at the request of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1983. ... An atrocity story as defined by the sociologists David G. Bromley and Anson D. Shupe is the symbolic presentation of action or events (real or imaginary) in such a context that they are made flagrantly to violate the (presumably) shared premises upon which a given set of social relationships should... Brainwashing (also known as thought reform or re-education) consists of any systematic effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and beliefs in a person against his/her will, usually beliefs in conflict with the persons prior beliefs and knowledge. ... A cult checklist is a group of factors proposed to identify objectively which groups, cults, or new religious movements are spurious, or likely to abuse or exploit or otherwise harm its members. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with deprogramming. ... Mind control (or thought control) has the premise that an outside source can control an individuals thinking, behavior or consciousness (either directly or more subtly). ... This article is in need of attention. ... Snapping is a term coined by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman in the 1978 anti-cult book of the same name to describe the mental process by which a recruit is converted by a mind control cult and other religious movements. ... Sociologists have proposed various classifications of cults and/or of new religious movements. ... Apostasy (from Greek αποστασία, meaning a defection or revolt, from απο, apo, away, apart, στασις, stasis, standing) is a term generally employed to describe the formal renunciation of ones religion, especially if the motive is deemed unworthy. ... A bigot is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles, or identities differing from his or her own. ... Jesus is considered by historians such as Weber to be an example of a charismatic religious leader; The sociologist Max Weber defined charismatic authority as resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained... Freedom of speech is the right to freely say what one pleases, as well as the related right to hear what others have stated. ... The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen guarantees freedom of religion, as long as religious activities do not infringe on public order in ways detrimental to society. ... Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. ... An intervention is an orchestrated attempt by one, or often many, people (usually family and friends) to get someone to seek professional help with an addiction or some kind of traumatic event or crisis. ... The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (Public Law 105–292, as amended by Public Law 106–55, Public Law 106–113, Public Law 107–228, Public Law 108–332, and Public Law 108–458)[1] was passed to promote religious freedom as a U.S. Foreign policy, and to... Large Group Awareness Training or LGAT is a term popularized in the American Psychological Associations 1986 draft DIMPAC report and also by Margaret Singer in her 1996 book Cults in our Midst to describe intense commercial trainings by non-psychologists which from the outside may resemble group therapy. ... Minority religion is the religion held by a minority of the population of a country, state, or region. ... The word occult comes from the Latin occultus (clandestine, hidden, secret), referring to knowledge of the hidden.[1] In the medical sense it is used commonly to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e. ... Personality alteration is a theory often associated with cults. ... Project Megiddo was a report researched and written by the FBI under Louis Freehs leadership. ... Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. ... Religious conversion is the adoption of a new religious identity, or a change from one religious identity to another. ... Religious intolerance is either intolerance motivated by ones own religious beliefs or intolerance against anothers religious beliefs or practices. ... Religious persecution is systematic mistreatment of an individual or group due to their religious affiliation. ... True-believer syndrome is a term coined by M. Lamar Keene in his 1976 book The Psychic Mafia referring to an irrational belief in paranormal events, even after direct confession or evidence that the events were fraudulently staged. ... 1533 account of the execution of a witch charged with burning the town of Schiltach in 1531. ... The status of religious freedom around the world varies from country to country. ... The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (abbreviated UDHR) is an advisory declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/217, 10 December 1948 at Palais de Chaillot, Paris). ...

References