The newcomer is not necessarily overwhelmed by the meeting nor is he necessarily enthused about attending again. The only important point from the perspective of cult recruitment is that he does attend again, perhaps even making a commitment to attend 90 meetings in 90 days until he is “qualified” to decide whether he needs AA or not.
The first time visitor is often overwhelmed. He may find it extremely difficult to remain unmoved by what he has seen and heard. In the space of an hour or two, stories of wrecked and healed lives are presented. Newer members pour out their anguished hearts and souls. The audience may be moved in quick succession from sadness, to anger, to joy, to gratitude. Wild applause and laughter echos from the walls. The newcomer may leave his first encounter with the impression that the groupers, in spite of holding some odd beliefs and using rather cryptic language, are extremely sincere, open, happy and have found something that “really works.” But this is only a small part of the dynamics of a meeting. The more important, life changing effects of the meeting are much more subtle.
The most important part of recruitment in any mind control cult is meeting attendance. One of the reasons for this is well demonstrated in a series of classic experiements done in the early 1950s by Solomon Asch.155
Various numbers of people in a room were given the job of determining which of two lines was longest even though one was obviously longer than the other. Each participant gave his answer in turn. This would be repeated several times. The catch was that all but the last to announce were confederates of the experimenter. They would all either give the right answer or all give the wrong answer. The purpose of the experiments were to determine the effect on the last person.