Cults attract people whose identity pillars have collapsed in a crisis

Evidence

For a stable personality it is favorable if all five pillars are well filled. A weaker pillar can also be balanced by the others; but if there are too many weak points in several areas of life, an imbalance arises, a deficiency that must be filled. This happens especially often in crisis situations, upheavals and new phases of life. Various groups and providers offer solutions for this. “In this sense, the path into the so-called cult can be seen as an attempted solution to an existing problem.” If these needs cannot be satisfied in any other way, an ideology is maintained with all its might, no matter how negative the consequences may be when viewed from the outside. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 401

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the addendum article ‘On Sacrifice’ about how groups provide meaning and belonging; also to general literature on cult recruitment as need-fulfillment. — connects to: Sacralized national identity emerges amid state collapse crises to rally mobilization — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1466
• SEED: Angle: reframing cult membership as a rational attempted solution to unmet identity needs rather than as mere gullibility.