Each groups of students presents a story of one cult. How it started, what it did and how it achieved its status.
Learn closer about social identity theory, groupthink, social influence and other elements of social psychology
Cults:
Documentaries:
Each group should prepare a presentation that includes the following:
Cults and social psychology:
Dear class,
Brief summary regarding the Cult presentations.
They will be due after the mocks at the end of May, beginning of June. I imagine it as a 20-40 minutes piece in a sort of a “storytelling” fashion 😊 Present the stories of people affected, build it in a sort of surprising way, use videos and audio recordings of its leaders, affected, practices and neatly fold in social psychology.
I expect you to use internet, books, movies, documentaries, audio recordings/podcasts etc. There is so much to find. Please don’t limit yourself to only internet written resources and only wiki. You have a month.
Examples of where you can go for info is Haruki Murakami’s book on Aum Shinrikyo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Murakami_book)), podcast about scientology (http://www.survivingscientologyradio.com/) etc. Recommended documentaries available on Netflix/youtube etc. (but there is so much more out there – especially about scientology and peoples temple). Be mindful that not everybody needs to listen/watch all of it, but it might be an interesting study afternoon 😊. If you can’t get hold of some resources, please let me know.
Wild wild country (Rajneeshpuram) Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (scientology) Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (peoples temple) Scientology and the Aftermath (scientology) A (Aum Shinrikyo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyKA9xA6BD8
I expect you to go over the following:
And then tackle the following questions with the use of social psychology phenomena we’ll talk about in lessons:
Topics to focus on might include:
As always, hit me with questions if something is unclear. Looking for your presentations.