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Chapter 8: COMPONENT 2 - UNDERMINING OF INTERNAL RESOURCES FOR
COPING WITH THREAT TO THE ORIGINAL ATTITUDE-BELIEF SYSTEM
The "Undermining of Internal Resources for Coping with Threat to the Original Belief
System,” must be understood as distinguishable from the threat or lack of threat central to
Component One. Having rocks thrown at one's glass house is a threat. Having the prowess, the
energy, and the skill to catch them and throw them back is a resource for coping with threat.
More threat means that more resources are required to cope with threat. It is when levels of
threat surpass the levels of resources available for coping with threat that the original house, or
the original belief system, is subject to collapse, or is rendered no longer functional.
As threat to the system could be selected for or induced, one may select individuals
whose resources for coping with threat are already undermined, or one can potentially induce
such an undermining of resources. In terms of our metaphor, one can select individuals who lack
the prowess or ability to catch and throw back rocks, or one can potentially induce such a lack of
prowess or ability, for example by depleting the individuals of energy, or by injuring their sight
or their throwing arms. Internal resources for coping with threat include motivation, both general
and specific, without which no defense against imposed threats would be possible. They also
include cognitive capabilities, such as intelligence, and problem solving abilities. And they
encompass less rational but potentially functional devices such as the Freudian defense
mechanisms of denial, repression, and rationalization. Related concepts from cognitive
consistency theorists (cf. Abelson and Rosenberg, 1957), such as attitude change, bolstering,
differentiation, and transcendence, also describe strategies by which threats posed by
inconsistencies within the belief system are averted in normally functioning systems. We will
discuss each of several broad category of tactics used to undermine internal resources for coping
with threat. In each case we will focus on how one might alter the conditions necessary for that
resource's operation. Be aware, however, that such a reduction in the availability of internal
resources may have occurred prior to exposure to the conversion environment, and that potential
converts may be self-selected or selected by others as a function of such prior conditions.
Undermining of General Motivation
A system will not be capable of adequately prescribing behavior or of generating behavior
once it is prescribed, nor will it be effective at the more internal functions of allowing one to
interpret experience or to understand the meaning of life, if it is lacking in basic motivational
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resources. To be functional, at the overall level, the system must supply sufficient energy and
motivation to allow for such processes. Threat to the system, as described in Component 1, can
be induced by anything that deprives an individual of such capabilities.
In this chapter, the focus is not on threat per se, but on undermining of resources for
coping with threat. Specifically, it is on undermining of internal resources for coping with threat.
While in some instances, threat based upon motivational deficits, Component 1, and undermining
of internal resources for coping with threat by depleting motivational resources, Component 2,
will overlap, these are conceptually different from each other. In Component 1, the subject of the
previous chapter, the motivational problem is concerned with lack of production of basic
processes necessary to adequate functioning. No specific threat other than to motivation is
implied. In Component 2, the concern is with the inability to cope with specific threats to the
original system, such as induced inconsistency or uncertainty, and the impact that depleted
motivation has on that ability to cope.
Physiological Depletion of Energy. Many of the conversion environments that we have
described either induced or exploited already existing depletion of energy due to sleep
deprivation. Depriving POW's of sleep was common, and doing so very likely had multiple
purposes, one of which was the general depletion of energy. Other purposes would include
increasing the reinforcement value of opportunities to sleep, which could then be made
contingent upon compliance behavior, and demonstrating the absolute power of those in control
over satisfaction of even the most basic needs. In the Unification Church conversion system used
at Berkeley, going to sleep late, in uncomfortable accommodations, and rising very early, often to
the sound of spirited singing by Moonie regulars, was legendary. Recruits were told that once
filled with the Holy Spirit, Moonies needed only four or five hours of sleep per night. Jim Jones
often worked for days with little or no sleep, admonishing followers that the work of God was
much more important than their own personal desire to sleep. He modeled for followers, with
the aid of amphetamines, a true believer for whom sleep had a very low priority. Many of them
followed his example, without of course the aid of artificial stimulants. As a result, these
followers would have had very depleted energy reserves, making them less effective than they
otherwise might have been at use of their own belief systems for production of behavior or for
other functional purposes. Inability to use what remained of their own belief systems would have
made them more dependent upon outside sources of influence, including the final directive of
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Jim Jones telling them to kill their children and themselves.
Usually combined with insufficient sleep, many of those subjected to conversion attempts
were also induced to engage in excessive physical exercise or other strenuous activities. This
was true for the Marines, for the Moonies, and for members of the Peoples Temple. In some
conversions environments individuals have also been subjected to nutritional deprivation. This
was true for some POW's, and for some religious cults. Critics of cults have often claimed that
cult "brainwashing" was facilitated by high carbohydrate, protein deficient diets that were
purposely used to make recruits more susceptible to persuasion. While it is plausible that some
forms of nutritional deficits may have such effects, there is little substantial evidence of
conscious use of diet for such purposes in most religious cults, or of the effectiveness of such
practices even if they are used. There is some striking evidence relevant to this issue in the case
of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, lead by Shoko Asahara, which was accused of release of the
chemical nerve gas, sarin, into the Tokyo subway. Ten people were killed and 5500 were injured
in this incident on March 20, 1995. Allegations of malnutrition of members were substantiated
by a raid on a training compound in the village of Kamiku Isshiki, in which 50 people were
found in advanced stages of malnutrition and dehydration. They did not want to be rescued.
They stayed in the chapel and refused medical attention.
Perhaps of greater significance for conversion than nutritional deficiencies is the fact that
new diets are often very different from those to which recruits have been accustomed. Eating
new foods at unusual times and in unusual ways induces both a novel external environment, in
which old habits may fail to adequately prescribe behavior, and a new internal environment, with
respect to which old attitudes and beliefs may be insufficient as a basis for interpreting new
experiences. Novel situations such as these, in addition to making one=s old system less
functional by rendering it incomplete as a basis for prescription of behavior, may also induce a
state of deindividuation, (Zimbardo, 1970), and may result in an outward focus of attention,
(Johnson and Downing, 1976), all of which increase susceptibility to influence of the
surrounding group.
Psychological Sources of Depletion of Energy. In extreme cases of psychological
depression, the individual may lose all motivation to respond to threats. Such states may be
selected for, but individuals suffering from chronic pathological states such as these are not
desirable candidates for conversion by most groups. The unpleasant reality is that such people
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will be a burden rather than an asset even if conversion is successful. A temporary state of
depression can, however, facilitate conversion by reducing defenses against persuasion at critical
times in the conversion process. Jim Jones used barbiturates and probably heroin to control
individuals, especially young women. The depression experienced by Patty Hearst was induced
not by drugs but by prolonged exposure to aversive outcomes over which she had no possibility
of control. These conditions resembled the conditions experienced by Sargant's battle fatigue
victims, and much research, by Martin Seligman (1975), and others, has shown that a "learned
helplessness" syndrome can be established by such treatment, and that one of the symptoms is a
depressed psychological state.
Learned helplessness was first demonstrated in laboratory animals, primarily dogs and
rats. In some ways the procedure is reminiscent of Pavlov's induction of experimental neurosis,
and even more closely to an instrumental conditioning variation on that procedure by Lashley. A
rat was placed on a platform of a "Lashley jumping stand," from which it could jump into either
of two "doors." One door fell open when touched allowing the rat to land on another flat surface
upon which it found and consumed food. The other door was locked, and when jumping against
it the rat would bump its nose and fall straight down for a foot or two into a net. Presumably the
first outcome was rewarding and the second punishing. If the rewarding door was visually
different enough from the punishing door, even though randomly placed on the right or left, a rat
would quickly learn to jump only to the door that was rewarded. Having acquired an ability to
discriminate between rewarding and punishing choices, the problem was then slowly made more
and more difficult by making the visual cues more and more similar. A point would be reached
where the rat could no longer reliably distinguish which response would yield rewards and
prevent punishment. Lashley's rats exhibited many of the symptoms of experimental neurosis
Pavlov's dogs had exhibited with impossible discriminations in classical conditioning. They
might respond randomly, or fixate to the right or left, or alternate right and left, all of which are
patterns of responding that treat the two stimuli as though they were equivalent. As the problem
was then made increasingly easy, by making the two stimuli different again, the rats would still
fail to return to a reliable pattern of obtaining food and avoiding punishment.
These rats, in the terms of Seligman's later theory, as a result of experiences in which they
had been helpless to avoid punishment, now came to act as though they were still helpless, even
in situations where ordinarily they would not have been helpless. Seligman used unavoidable
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electrical shock to create a learned helplessness syndrome in rats and dogs, after which they
would not attempt to avoid or escape from aversive situations, even where potentially effective
responses were available. A major contribution of Seligman's work was to show a broad
generalization of such learning such that animals having been subjected to learned helplessness
training came to behave as though they were helpless even in very different situations. For
example, rats given learned helplessness training involving unavoidable shock in a Skinner box,
subsequently, when dropped in a barrel of water, failed to save themselves by swimming to the
sides, as did other rats not subjected to the training.
Much of Seligman's later work shows the relevance of the learned helplessness syndrome
to human populations, and especially to those who are diagnosed as depressed. For our purposes,
this suggests a basis for lack of motivation to use even resources that are available in an attempt
to cope with threat to one's belief system.
Undermining of Motivation to Use Internal Resources to Cope with Threat
The general depletion of energy discussed above, while not uncommon as a device for
undermining of internal resources, is probably of less importance for most conversions than are
deficits resulting from impairment of specific resources such as are critical for defense against
threat.
Undermining of Self-Reliance. Many of the internal resources for coping with threat to
the attitude-belief system can only be used if the individual accesses them and directs them to be
used. One may for example have problem-solving ability, but it will not help to solve problems
until one chooses to use it. The problem must be addressed, along with the problem-solving
abilities, in the presence of motivation directing at solving it. This is not automatic. To make the
effort necessary, one must believe that the potential exists for that effort to be rewarded by
success. This belief in what Alfred Bandura (1977) has called "self-efficacy" may be undermined
in numerous ways. I have already discussed the impact of being subjected to prolonged exposure
in circumstances where one has no control over aversive outcomes. In extreme cases this leads
to what Martin Seligman (1975) called the "learned helplessness syndrome”, reducing overall
motivation. A persistently low relationship between one's behaviors and one's outcomes also
produces a personality trait of what Julian Rotter (1953) labeled "high external locus of control."
All of these conditions are characterized by a loss of the belief that one is capable of making
choices that have a high probability of successfully reducing threats posed to the individual.
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Lacking belief that control is possible, individuals will not utilize even those internal resources
that they do have for coping with threat. Conditions such as those described are common not
only to soldiers on the battlefield, but to many others whose life experiences have involved
unavoidable aversive outcomes. Such individuals, having no expectation that by using their own
internal resources they can cope with threat, will not be motivated to attempt to do so.
More general concepts, of "self-esteem," and "self-confidence," have also been the
subject of much research and theory, and are clearly relevant to inclinations to utilize internal
resources. One such type of research by experimental social psychologists is that involving
independence versus social conformity as influences on subjects' judgments (Asch, 1951).
Reviews of 40 years of research make clear that whatever decreases subjects' confidence in their
own ability to make correct or appropriate judgments decreases their reliance upon internal
resources and increases their reliance upon external resources, (i.e. other people). Both chronic
sources of perceived lack of ability to cope, and temporary induction of feelings of inadequacy
relative to that of some an external source or group, will reduce confidence in one's own internal
devices for making decisions and forming independent judgments. Shoko Asahara, the leader of
the Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo, established control over a group of blind classmates in school
by exploiting the fact that he, having some sight, was better than they at leading them from place
to place. Charles Manson seems to have made certain that his followers always took more drugs
than he did, thereby insuring that they would be, at least relatively, less competent than he at
understanding and resolving issues of conflict. In terms of self-confidence, it is not one's
absolute ability to make decisions that is important, but one's ability relative to that of others who
are willing and able to make decisions for them.
Attacks upon the self-esteem of potential converts are common in the case studies we
have described. They are basic to the techniques developed by the Chinese and used on Chinese
intellectuals and American POW's. They are evident in the mortification of drug addicts and of
Marine recruits. Cult groups frequently use confession of past failures of potential converts as
evidence of their inability to solve problems on their own. The more effectively the conversion
environment undermines self-esteem of recruits, the more it undermines their motivation to rely
upon their own judgment or their own capacity for responding to threat.
Attacks upon self-esteem, included here as part of Component Two: Undermining
Internal Resources for Coping with Threat, is not the same as threat to the self-identity, which we
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discussed as a part of Component One: Massive Threat to the Belief System. Attacks upon the
self-identity where it is central to the integration and organization of the system, as is typically
the case, will constitute a threat to the system itself. In the same way, if it is ideology that
provides an organizing and integrating function, attacks upon ideology will constitute threats to
the system. Undermining of self-esteem is most important, not as a direct threat to the system,
but because it reduces the motivation to use whatever internal resources one may have for coping
with threat.
Discouraging the Use of Internal Resources.
One cannot be prevented by others from using cognitive defenses against threat to the
belief system, for such processes cannot be directly observed. Attempts to discourage the use of
internal resources must be directed toward outward manifestations of their use.
Punishment of Overt Manifestations of the Use of Internal Resources. While a person
cannot be effectively punished for thinking, one can be punished for thinking aloud. If thinking
aloud were an asset to covert thinking, such punishment would reduce the effectiveness of covert
thinking. Punishment of overt responses such as seem reflective of the use of internal resources
for coping with threat may be effective for two types of reasons.
First, some covert processes are made more efficient with the aid of relevant overt
behaviors. For example, holding a phone number in short-term memory is easier if it can be
stated aloud. The memory is internal but the overt behavior contributes to its efficiency.
Problem-solving may be facilitated by the use of pencil and paper. Thinking may require
spending time with one's eyes closed in a non-distracting environment. In short, if others can see
overt behaviors that suggest the use of internal resources, they have the potential to suppress
those behaviors with punishment, distraction, or by other means, and hence to reduce the
effectiveness of the use of internal resources such as were dependent upon those external
supports.
Secondly, the expectation that some punishment or reward may be contingent upon
external behaviors may lead to behaviors that are discrepant from internally held attitudes and
beliefs which are critical to the use of internal resources. For example, being encouraged to
convince new recruits to suspend their critical judgment is inconsistent with an inclination to use
one's own critical judgment. Stating publicly that one is powerless over alcohol may be
discrepant with one's beliefs that they do have such power, and the resulting dissonance may be
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reduced by deciding that in fact one does not have such power after all.
Some additional examples may help to clarify some of these points. In the Unification
Church, recruits are admonished to not try to figure things out on their own. Evidence that one is
privately trying to resolve conflicts that have been so artfully created by the group are met with
group pressure to postpone decision-making and to trust the group to provide answers at the
appropriate time. By withdrawal of attention and affection, the group demonstrates to new
recruits that expression of doubt is unacceptable. The rationale provided for not attempting to
resolve conflict internally is that the devil will, by manipulation of the reasoning process, trick
you into rejection of the truth of the Divine Principle. A childish slogan used by the Moonies to
shut down the use of internal resources for coping with threat, in Lifton's (1961) terminology a
"thought terminating cliche", is, "To think, is to stink." If one is motivated to not lose the
acceptance of the group, then behaviors such as suggest one is experiencing doubt, or one is
trying to figure things out for oneself, or one is thinking about a potentially troubling issue, will
cease to occur. While it is possible, even in the absence of external manifestations of their use,
for an individual to still be relying upon internal resources for coping with threat, the need to
reduce inconsistency between overt behavior and internal attitudes and beliefs is likely to
undermine such use.
Voluntary Rejection of the Use of Internal Resources.
Individuals may come to reject the use of internal resources as a result of adopting
attitudes and beliefs that are incompatible with such use. This could include, for example,
coming to believe that thinking is a tool of the devil, that it is evil, stupid, or naive, or that it is
evidence of lack of trust or faith. This can occur as an internalization of the punishment of
relevant overt behaviors as described in the previous section. Such internalization will follow the
well established pattern of decades of dissonance and self-attribution theory experiments. For
example, the less obvious and extensive the external coercion, the more there will be
internalization of attitudes consistent with that behavior. The more subtle the coercion used for
example by the Moonies to get potential converts to behave overtly as though they agree that they
are in danger of satanic influence if they insist upon independent thinking, the more they will be
inclined to internalize that idea. Having internalized it, they will then be more likely to
voluntarily refrain from such independent thinking.
In AA, it is made clear that fruitful participation can only occur if one embarks upon the
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12-step program. Admitting to the group that one is an alcoholic is in a sense an entry
requirement. Step one states, "We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives
had become unmanageable." Engaging in public behavior endorsing such sentiments is
voluntary, and the explicit consequences for not doing so are vague and diffuse. Thus, while the
social pressure is very real, and may be the basis for early compliance, it may not "seem" a
sufficient reason for compliance, hence the behavior will be dissonant with residual attitudes
favoring self-reliance. Dissonance promotes dissonance reduction, which may be accomplished
by accepting the attitude that one is powerless over alcohol. If, on the other hand, verbalizing
step one is seen as necessary to stay in the group, and staying in the group is seen as the only way
to keep the judge from putting you in prison, research suggests that little internalization will
occur. For somewhat different theoretical reasons, self-attribution theories make the same
predictions as dissonance theory. Research has abundantly confirmed the validity of such
predictions in a wide variety of contexts, for a wide variety of issues, and for a wide variety of
people.
In some conversion environments, potential recruits are encouraged to temporarily
suspend their critical reasoning and internal problem-solving orientation as a device for
achieving insight, or as an experiment in open-mindedness. In a short film called “Moonchild”,
made by a group of ex-Moonies, Gary Sharp plays the role of a lecturer at a Moonie conversion
center, a role he had played in the cult for years. He starts by asking newcomers to take part in a
little experiment. "I know that all of you would not be here this weekend unless you had some
serious opinions about the purpose of your life. Why is there conflict in the world? Where do I
go with my life? Those kinds of questions. It's a little bit like buying furniture. You know, if
you've had some living room furniture, you've had it for many years, it's very comfortable, but
something isn't quite right. So what you have to do is take the old furniture, and put it across the
hall in another room, and then when you bring in the new furniture it feels just right. And in a
sense that's what I am inviting you to do this weekend. Take all of your old opinions, all your
ideas, and bundle them up in a big bag and put them over in a different room in your mind.
That's our experiment. If we focus on the things that hold us together, instead of the things keep
us apart, this experiment can be an amazing experience of love, for each of us, within us and
among us. And you know what's great about it? Furniture costs a lot of money. Ideas are free."
This seems to recruits like a harmless enough game, and many very likely try to do as
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they are asked. In retrospect, ex-Moonies may question the wisdom of voluntarily emptying
one’s mind to take part in an experiment being run by others with a very specific notion of what
they want it to be refilled with. Were this the only influence being exerted it may be relatively
harmless, but as only one of numerous devices being employed, it could contribute to the general
disuse of internal resources for coping with threat, and as a result increase the potential for
ideological conversion.
These techniques involving "voluntary" rejection of the use of internal resources seem
most important, and most likely to be effective, where at least some predisposition to accept the
intended influence exists in the potential convert. It is my view that such predispositions will
make conversion more likely, but that even in the absence of such predispositions, other devices
can be sufficiently effective at undermining of internal resources to make conversion feasible.
Where there are predispositions favoring acceptance of a new group or a new ideology, these
may have their major influence at the early stages of the process, where they make it more likely
that recruits will voluntarily suspend use of their internal resources for coping with threat.
Undermining of Cognitive Resources for Coping with Threat
In the preceding sections I have discussed the general and specific motivational
impediments to the use of internal resources. Even if it is assumed that such motivation as is
necessary for use of internal resources is present, however, other forces may prevent the effective
utilization of those resources. Most internal resources for coping with threat, given sufficient
motivation, still require the presence of skills, abilities, and cognitive information processing
capabilities (i.e., usable intelligence). Individuals already possessing low levels of these may be
selected, or low levels may be induced by the conversion environment.
Undoubtedly, people who have a chronic lack of such capacities for coping with threat
will, on the average, be more likely to find themselves in situations with which their attitudebelief systems fail to be adequately adaptive. Being more suitable candidates for conversion,
they may be more likely to self-select or be selected by groups in search of converts. This may
be counterbalanced by the fact that most groups do not need large numbers of members who will
chronically lack such abilities, and so do not seek them out. There are, of course, exceptions to
this reluctance to select from the chronically impaired. The Peoples Temple selected a wide
range of people, many of whom were never likely to contribute much more than obedience and
manual labor to the group mission, but many of these were old and had pension and social
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security checks to contribute. As long as the burden of taking care of those not capable of taking
care of themselves did not exceed the benefits to be derived from having them as members, low
levels of functioning need not be a barrier to selection. Some might also argue that for selecting
men to be soldiers, willing to die in battle, level of cognitive functioning is not a major
consideration. Even here, however, selecting from those below a certain level may be
counterproductive. Recall that one of the first large scale uses of intelligence testing, the Army
Alpha, was created for purposes of selection, rejection, and placement of candidates for military
service in World War I.
While there is little evidence of how and when individuals in most conversion
environments are selected in relationship to chronic deficits in cognitive functioning, much is
known about selection and induction as related to more temporary disabilities, such as those
associated with the use of alcohol or drugs. Selection based upon prior alcohol and drug use has
been characteristic of many preconversion members of the Peoples Temple, the Manson Family,
the Divine Light Mission, and certainly of groups specializing in treatment for alcohol and drug
problems, such as AA and Synanon. It is the induction of deficits in cognitive functioning by the
conversion environment, however, that is our primary interest.
Many of the sources of undermining of motivation that I have previously discussed have
an independent effect of impairing cognitive functioning. These include effects of sleep
deprivation, nutritional deficits, excessive exercise and energy depletion, and the use of chemical
depressants, including alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates. Many other influences are not primarily
associated with impaired motivation, but have more specific effects, such as the impairing of
cognitive information processing. These include non-depressant psychoactive drugs, LSD,
cocaine, methamphetamines, marijuana, and others. Also included are effects of excessive
chanting and meditation, as well as sensory deprivation, and sensory overload. High levels of
arousal also interfere with efficient processing of complex information.
Undermining of the Opportunity to use Internal Resources to Cope with Threat
Even if one is motivated to use internal resources for coping with threat, and those
resources are still intact for possible use, it is possible for them to be made unavailable for use.
The use of internal resources requires time. In an environment where nearly every waking
minute of a recruit's or potential convert's life is filled with planned and structured activities, as
in Marine boot camp, or in a Moonie conversion center, that time is not available. It is also
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necessary for the time that is available to be relatively free of distractions or competing activities,
and of course that such times are not immediately filled with long overdue sleep.
Many individuals, to effectively use their internal resources for coping with threat, seem
to require at least some degree of privacy. Such privacy is routinely denied in many conversion
environments. The Moonies, it is alleged, even follow new recruits into the bathroom.
Deindividuation as a Source of Undermined Use of Internal Resources
The state of deindividuation results primarily from being subjected to an environment in
which people are relatively indistinguishable from each other, "homogeneity," and/or they are
unidentifiable as individuals, "anonymity," (Zimbardo. 1970). In a related theory, loss of
"objective self-awareness" results from similar causes, and explicitly implies a shift of the focus
of attention outward, away from awareness of self-relevant attitudes, beliefs, values, or
dispositions, and toward the environment external to the individual (Duval, and Wickland, 1972).
The opposite states, of individuation and increased objective self-awareness, result from
environments in which individual uniqueness and identity are highlighted and made salient.
These produce an inward focus of attention.
Conversion environments are frequently characterized by conditions likely to induce
deindividuation and loss of objective self-awareness. Recall for example the deindividuating
forces in Marine boot camp: uniforms, removal of individuating clothing and hairstyles, being
called "recruit" rather than by their unique names, etc. The resulting homogeneity and anonymity
in such an environment are expected to induce a focus of attention away from self, including
those aspects of the self that we are calling internal resources for coping with threat. In this state,
some threats will not even be recognized as threats, but even those that are perceived as threats
will be responded to not in terms of the individual's personal values or beliefs, but in terms of
potential responses and solutions suggested by the external environment that is the focus of one's
attention.
A study by a student of mine, Robert Johnson, at the University of Georgia, (Johnson and
Downing ;1976), demonstrated that subjects in an experiment who were deindividuated, as
opposed to individuated, gave more severe electric shocks to a person they were angry with when
in the presence of Ku Klux Klan uniforms; but when deindividuated in the presence of nurses'
costumes they were more inclined to reduce shock levels. In other words, the environmental
suggestion of how to resolve the problem of what to do, to increase shock given Ku Klux Klan
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cues, or to decrease shock given nurse cues, was more powerful under conditions of
deindividuation.
Many other studies by Duval and Wickland (1972) show that increasing self-awareness or
individuation, such as by having subjects see their own reflection in mirrors, increases the extent
to which behavior comes under the control of internal values and beliefs. We would say that the
problem of how to respond is more likely to be resolved through the use of internal resources for
coping with threat when one is objectively self-aware; but that loss of self-awareness undermines
one's ability to use internal resources for coping with threat.
SUMMARY OF COMPONENTS ONE AND TWO
In order for a person to be a viable candidate for conversion, the Six-Component Model
requires that the initial attitude-belief system, whether or not it is ideologically based, be
rendered inadequate at fulfilling the basic functions which constitute its reason for being. This
state is a result of a dynamic interplay of levels of threat imposed upon the system, which is
Component One, and the use of coping mechanisms for averting such threat. One category of
such coping mechanisms relevant to Component Two, internal resources for coping with threat,
has been covered in the present chapter. A second category of such coping mechanisms is
relevant to Component Three, external resources for coping with threat, which will be covered in
the next chapter. The greater the level of threat imposed, the greater must be the combination of
internal and external resources for coping with threat in order to avert undermining of the
original attitude-belief system. For a given level of threat, the weaker one=s internal resources
for coping, the more one requires the presence of external resources. It is to this topic that we
now turn.