Disaffiliation from a New Religious Movement: The Importance of Self and Others in Exit

Challenging the popular belief that people who join new religious movements (NRMs) become “entrapped,” this study describes the way in which 23 former members of 11 different “cults” personally negotiated disaffiliation. The current findings support previous studies that posit exit as a resolution to unresolved doubts and dissonances, and contribute to this literature by suggesting that the nature of these dissonances, and the way in which exit constitutes a “solution” to these dissonances may vary. It is suggested that for approximately half of the participants in this study, the dissonances that precipitated exit, were relatively minor, primarily caused by organizational changes and inconsistencies in the teachings. While generally doubts were resolved privately and commitment sustained, exit occurred when alternate discourses or other identity resources became available through which doubts could become resolved. The remaining participants describe the conflicts that precipitated disaffiliation as pertaining to tensions between the groups' expectation of conformity and their sense of autonomy. These participants describe exit as a solution to the stress and emotional exhaustion of membership. To make sense of these different disaffiliation narratives, symbolic interactionist notions of the self as constructed in both the realm of “Self” and “Others” are applied.     

Association between adolescents' socioeconomic status and working memory updating functioning: Role of parental educational involvement

Family socioeconomic status (SES) is positively associated with executive functioning. This study tested whether parental educational involvement mediates this association. Two hundred and sixty, 12-15-year-old adolescents completed working memory updating (WMU) and general intelligence tasks, and questionnaires on SES and parental educational involvement. SES and WMU ability were positively associated; there was no difference between the fathers and mothers for three types of educational involvement. The mothers’ behavioural involvement positively mediated the SES-WM updating association, whereas a negative mediation was observed for the mothers’ intellectual involvement. The fathers’ educational involvement did not play a significant mediating role. These results might inform interventions targeting educational involvement for enhancing the cognitive development of children from low SES families.