Developmental Characteristics of Adolescents That Increase Risk of Joining Anti-Social Cults

Socio-pedagogical studies of victimization consider various age cohorts within their respective anthropological contexts, in which specific risk factors are identified for individuals at a given physio-psychological stage that may threaten their integral identity and future development. This paper examines the characteristics of youth that predispose young people to join countercultural groups, and in particular antisocial cults. There is a pressing need to address this issue because the leaders of countercultural organizations are actively recruiting young and capable persons to join their groups. Because Western scholars have been the first to write about the problem of antisocial cultism, our goal has been to analyze the main foreign studies by primarily American and Canadian psychologists and educators that probe the reasons why young people join vile cults. Characteristics of this age group, such as fear of rejection by peers, growing sexuality, growing conflicts with the adult world, youthful black-and-white thinking, the active development of an independent worldview, and sympathy for alternative religiosity, are not strict conditions determining whether young people will join antisocial cults. However, the considered characteristics allow us to deem this period in a person’s development as one of the most vulnerable in terms of developing deviant religious views.