Lewis/Sects and Stats, 9. Post-Involvement Attitudes

In Chapters nine and ten, I turn my attention to the post-involvement attitudes and other characteristics of former NRM members which fly in the face of accepted stereotypes. My earliest quantitative work involved questionnaire research on former members of controversial New Religions. In a series of papers published in the 1980s, I contrasted the attitudes of ex-members and found a high correlation between negative, cult-stereotypical attitudes and exposure to anti-cult socialization. As part of later studies, I gathered more limited data from ex-members of MSIA and OCS, finding, in general, positive attitudes toward their former group. This later phenomenon is explainable, in part, by the ethic of seekership found in the West’s alternative spiritual subculture.