CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/26/2026

[Patrick Ryan]

Here is a summary of the latest news reports and articles related to cults, religious movements, and legal developments:

European Journal of Social Psychology: The Effectiveness of Interventions Addressing Conspiracy Beliefs: A Meta-Analysis

educing conspiracy beliefs through effective interventions may help mitigate potential harmful consequences, such as vaccine hesitancy and prejudice. Therefore, a systematic literature search was conducted in Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar for experiments testing interventions that could potentially reduce conspiracy beliefs. The present Bayesian three-level meta-analysis with 273 effect sizes from 56 samples (N = 27,996) provides the first comprehensive overview of factors affecting intervention effectiveness, including sample characteristics, intervention design and conspiracy belief features. Although the average intervention effect was small (g = 0.16, 95% CR [0.12, 0.20]), individual effect sizes exhibited substantial variability. Interventions adopting several evidence-based recommendations, such as fact-checking conspiracy claims, tailoring intervention content to specific beliefs and avoiding single-item measures of conspiracy beliefs, can potentially achieve effects exceeding g = 0.3. These findings advance theoretical models on the role of sender, message and recipient characteristics in combating harmful conspiracy beliefs. At the same time, extensive sensitivity analyses revealed that various bias sources might lead to under- or overestimation of certain effects. Furthermore, although study-level risk of bias scores (RoB 2 tool) were unrelated to intervention effectiveness, 82% of the available studies were at high risk of bias. The identified limitations and research gaps, such as the prevalence of underpowered studies and the scarcity of research on long-term intervention effects, provide clear directions for strengthening future intervention research.

Rationalist: Religious charities could face regulatory action over coercive control, regulator tells RSA

"Religious charities found to have engaged in illegal activity under any new state laws targeting coercive control and harmful activity in cults and high-demand groups could face regulatory action and have their charitable status revoked, the nation’s charities regulator has confirmed."

The Economist: Social media are helping cults to recruit and control members

"It began as just another niche game inside Roblox, an American video-game platform. Players wandered through dark forests, exchanged clues and chatted as they explored. Within these spaces a group of adults steered some children into Discord, an online messaging service. They told them that the game’s geometric symbol had real-world power and could connect them to a “higher state”. Entry to the group’s inner circle required proof of loyalty. Children were asked to film themselves performing a series of tasks. At first the challenges seemed harmless. Over time they became more intrusive, with some children pushed into carving the symbol into their skin.

Incidents like this illustrate how the internet has changed the way cults operate by replacing the door-to-door evangelists and street-corner preachers of the past with online influencers, life coaches and self-styled healers. These new cult leaders target people where they are most vulnerable: alone online."

" ... The result has been a sharp increase in cult activity. MIVILUDES, the French government’s watchdog on “sectarian aberrations”, logged more than 4,500 reports of suspected cult activity in 2024. The number of such alerts (rather than a count of groups) was more than double the level recorded in 2015. A majority involved communities that had online activities. The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), a global network of researchers who study coercive groups, now tracks more than 4,000 of them worldwide, compared with roughly 2,000 in the 1980s.

Cults tend to have four characteristics that distinguish them from ordinary groups. The first is a charismatic leader who claims special access to truth or power and is often narcissistic or messianic. The second is a belief system that promises transformation or salvation, whether spiritual awakening, perfect health or material success. The third is a system of control such as rules that erode individuals’ autonomy, often through exhaustion, surveillance or humiliation—such as staged tests of loyalty. The fourth is a system of social pressure that punishes doubt and those who leave, through ostracism, intimidation or loss of family and community ties. All of these elements can be reproduced online, where they are harder to detect and where recruiters can more easily reach large numbers of people.

The internet has not simply increased the number of cults. It has also splintered them, says Carlos Bardavío, a Spanish lawyer who specialises in cases involving coercive groups. Whereas he once dealt with a small number of well-defined groups, he now receives requests linked to dozens of tiny ones. In 1978 a survey by ICSA found about 400 former members clustered in just 40 organisations. In its latest survey more than 900 former members were spread across 540 groups."

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