In recent decades many widely reported events have directed attention to numerous issues involved in ideological conversion, and in the commitment of individuals to powerful groups or leaders.  Among the most dramatic of these have been he allegations of "brainwashing" by the Chinese communists, the conversion of Patricia Hearst to the views of her revolutionary kidnappers in the Symbionese Liberation Army, the widespread involvement of American young people in unusual religious cults, and the unparalleled influence of Jim Jones over the members of the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, who at his instruction killed their children and themselves.  More recently, the death of David Koresh and his followers, the Branch Davidians, in the assault on their Waco, Texas compound by agencies of the United States Government; the ritual killings of members of a European cult group, "The Solar Temple;" and the furor surrounding the death of the Rabbi Menachen Sneerson, believed to be the Messiah by many thousands of his Brooklyn followers, reminded us that these issues continue to be important. That such phenomena not are not merely historical curiosities, but are of critical importance in the world today, was confirmed once again by the news of a Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo, lead by Shoku Asahara, which released the nerve gas, sarin, into the Tokyo subway, killing ten and injuring over five thousand people.  The suicides of the members of Heaven's Gate, a prelude to their being transported to a space craft hidden behind the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet, and the murder of over 1000 members of the Ugandan cult that called itself "The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God," further testify to the dangers, the persistence and the pervasiveness of cult phenomena.  It is a near certainty that such concerns will continue to be central to many of tomorrow's headlines as well.
        My interest in this topic started at the time of the Jonestown mass murder/suicide.  At that time, in November of 1978, I was teaching a social psychology course and felt obligated to try to say something meaningful about this bizarre situation in which over 900 people had died.  Followers had apparently killed their own children and then committed suicide at the order of their messianic leader, Jim Jones.  How could people come to a point where they would be willing to obey such an order?  Were these people crazy?   Were they in a situation that was so powerful that anybody exposed to it would have done the same thing?  Was there something peculiar about them as individuals that caused them to behave the way they did, or perhaps, that caused them to be in that kind of situation?
        The news media were not very helpful at answering such questions.  While they did a good job at uncovering the facts and the descriptive characteristics of what took place, explanations of why it happened always seemed to fall short.  It was said that the Peoples Temple was a "cult," and that it had "brainwashed" its members.  This sounded like an explanation, but I knew little about such "cults," or about "brainwashing."
        I found many sensible academic definitions of "cults," but the more I read the more I got the impression that the term "cult" was used quite loosely, as a label for any group smaller than one's own that was disliked or feared.  I also found that there is a widespread notion, apparently accepted by many reporters, that a technology exists, a mysterious and exotic technology, called "brainwashing." If applied to individuals against their will, this technology, supposedly, can reliably convert people to religious or political ideologies totally foreign to what they had previously believed.  To evaluate the favored explanation of the Jonestown tragedy, that the People's Temple was a "cult," and that its members had been "brainwashed,"  I needed to know more about "cults," and about "brainwashing."
        But what is a cult?  How many other cults are there, and how dangerous are they?  Are they really in any meaningful way different from the many groups that most people are a part of?  What is "brainwashing?"  This idea has been around at least since the Korean war.  Presumably, the Red Chinese in the Korean War had brainwashed American pilots to convert them from Americanism, democracy, and capitalism, to the Chinese version of Marxist communism.  It was portrayed in the movies we saw,  in the headlines we read, and in documentaries where we saw American flyers stand up and denounce the United States, presumably because they had been brainwashed into becoming Communists.  Is brainwashing really what was happening in Jonestown?   To what extent does brainwashing really exist, even concerning prisoners of war?
        I decided to read and to find out as much as I could about what was known about religious cults, rapid ideological conversion, and brainwashing.  What I found surprised me.  I thought that there must be a vast literature out there to which I personally had just never been exposed; that upon reading what was available I would gain a much clearer insight into what was going on here; that I might even discover a set of rules which, if adequately and rigorously followed, would lead to the brainwashing of an unwilling participant.  I found no such answers.  There are volumes of descriptions and case studies of individuals recounting their own experiences of religious or ideological conversion, many of them very dramatic.  There are many journalistic accounts, usually brief stories that capture a particular incident in which an individual or a group has been converted or a radical group has been involved in some dramatic incident.  None of these go very far, however, in explaining why people are converted, or why, having been converted, they show such commitment to the new group, to its causes, or to its leaders.  None really get at the issue of brainwashing except to use it to label the mysterious conversions in question.
         I decided to attempt to develop a more coherent point of view with respect to this set of phenomenon: issues of conversion, of brainwashing, and of the power of cults and of cult leaders to induce radical changes and powerful commitments in members.  This was not an entirely new field of study for me.  I had been teaching social psychology courses in group dynamics, at the graduate level at the University of Georgia for six years, and then at Union College, and more recently at the State University of New York, College at Oneonta.  I have also taught courses at all these places on theories of attitudes and attitude change.  In addition to teaching, I had conducted experimental social psychological research over these years.  Most of my own research had been, incidentally, on the effects of groups on the attitudes and behaviors of individuals who come under their influence.
         Little had been done to integrate the massive body of social psychological research on theories of attitude change with the extensive research on group dynamics.  Clearly these things are related.  From the earliest theories in social psychology the importance of groups for understanding the formation and change of attitudes has been recognized, but the research paradigms in group dynamics and in theories of attitudes and attitude change have not overlapped very well.  Neither of these traditions seemed very helpful in really understanding the dramatic real-world consequences of individual involvement with radical religious groups, religious conversion, and commitment to messianic religious leaders.  My goal in recent years has been to develop a framework for understanding these phenomena, in the context of which the existing research and theory on attitudes and groups can be of use.
         This book presents a model, which I have developed as a result of pursuing these issues.  The major themes that have evolved from this effort can be characterized as those of Conversion and those of Commitment.  Why does one come to accept a new ideology that is highly discrepant from one's prior beliefs?  And when does one come to feel, think, and act in accordance with an ideology, even when faced with substantial reasons for doing otherwise?
         Cults frequently involve rapid or dramatic conversions, both getting into them, and getting out of them.  They also seem frequently to engender in their adherents a depth of commitment that is rare in most other groups.  Because of this rapidity of conversion, and depth of commitment, cults could be using processes that are different in kind from processes likely to be operating in less dramatic groups.  What I have come to believe, however, is that cults are microcosms of larger and more ordinary groups.  The processes made more visible in cults are the same as the processes by which all of us come to believe one set of things rather than another, and by which we become committed to some of these beliefs more than to others.
 The title of the book, Fragile Realities, reflects another remarkable fact about the human condition made more obvious by the study of cults.  In the context of cohesive groups, people seem capable of believing in an extraordinary variety of interpretations of reality.  More striking is the rejection of one view of reality, and acceptance of a quite different and incompatible one, in the process of conversion.  I hope that readers of this book will be motivated to spend more time than they otherwise would reflecting upon the foundations of their own special view of reality, and will become more tolerant of people and groups whose interpretations differ.
         "Best Guesses"  might also have been an apt title for this book, for that is what all of us accept as reality, and what guides all of our behaviors.  A Lilly Tomlin line aptly suggests that reality is no more than "a collective hunch."  We will discover that her characterization is not far afield from some of our best theoretical interpretations of why people believe what they believe.  Scientists, as a collection of people, are careful guessers, whose hunches are right more often than others perhaps because they only ask the questions that they are comfortable in answering.  In this book I will ask some very difficult questions.  My approach is to use the scientifically based field of social psychology, which has over a period of nearly a century developed voluminous data and well substantiated theory relevant to our understanding of phenomena such as conversion and commitment.  The scientific approach is not the only possible method for arriving at answers.  It is, however,  more valid than other approaches within the narrow realm of its purview.  Science will not answer all of our questions to our satisfaction, but it does provide a relatively stable foundation.  Whatever else we might believe will hopefully comport with what is well established by objective and scientific methods to be true.
        Unfortunately, what this science of careful guessing can tell us is often much less than what we need to know.  At best, the scientific approach gives us an anchor in an objective reality.  It is the anchor with which, eventually, all ideologies must come to terms.  I personally hope that as diverse ideologies are forced to deal with similar problems, such as the problem of how to cope with an ever expanding, scientifically infused realm of information about objective reality, the more those ideologies will become similar to each other.  As they become more similar, one has reason to hope that they will become increasing less fearful of and less in conflict with each other.  Much of this book will be searching for that anchor, that best guess, that which is objectively most plausible, that which is most reasonably inferred from what is objectively known about cults, and conversion, and commitment.
        For many readers' purposes, the answers found here will not be enough.  They will not find answers to many important questions such as those requiring answers in the form of prescriptions for behavior.  Objective reality, ascertained as well as it can be by scientific methods, is seldom sufficient as a basis for what one ought best to do.  A knowledge of objective reality is an indispensable tool, however,  in the formulation of behavior prescriptions that are adaptive.  The reader will, having read this book, still be required to make his or her own choices, but hopefully choices that consider the facts, as best we can know them, will be better choices.
        Over the years of teaching courses concerning these issues, I have been fortunate to have had many students whose interest, enthusiasm, and hard work, stimulated me to greater efforts to resolve the many unanswered and perplexing questions addressed in this book.  In some cases, students were responsible for my introduction to particular cults and other powerful groups.  In other cases they were responsible for broadening the net of inquiry to include noncult groups with which they were familiar, and which they insisted used identical or similar methods for converting or increasing commitment of members, e.g., fraternities and sororities, sports teams, and summer camp.  I owe these students a great debt, and I only regret that there have been too many of them for me to identify each by name.  Many of them encouraged me to write this book.  I hope they will be pleased with the result.