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Love bombing is the deliberate show of affection or friendship by an individual or a group of people toward another individual. Critics have asserted that this action may be motivated in part by the desire to recruit, convert or otherwise influence.

As of 2005, the phrase can be used in two slightly different ways.

• Members of the Unification Church, and perhaps members of other groups, use or have used the phrase themselves to mean a genuine expression of friendship, fellowship, interest, or concern.
• Critics of cults use the phrase with the implication that the "love" is feigned and the practice is manipulative. "Love bombing" is often cited by critics as one of the methods used by some cults and religions to recruit and retain members.

History of term

The term was used within, and is often associated with, the Unification Church, especially the San Francisco Bay area church known as the "Oakland family." In 1999 testimony to the Maryland Cult Task Force, Ronald Loomis, Director of Education for the International Cultic Studies Association, reflecting his belief that the term was not invented by critics, asserted: "We did not make up this term. The term 'love bombing' originated with the Unification Church, the Moonies. It’s their term. Another group that’s active on many Maryland campuses, the International Churches of Christ, also uses that term."

Though the term was already widely used by the media at the time, the Unification Church used it at least as early as 1978. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, used the term "love bomb" in a July 23, 1978 speech (translated):

Unification Church members are smiling all of the time, even at four in the morning. The man who is full of love must live that way. When you go out witnessing you can caress the wall and say that it can expect you to witness well and be smiling when you return. What face could better represent love than a smiling face? This is why we talk about love bomb; Moonies have that kind of happy problem.

Former members of the Children of God, including Deborah Davis, daughter of the founder of the Children of God, and Kristina Jones, daughter of an early member, have used the term in describing the early days of the organization.

Criticism of love bombing and response

Critics of cults often cite love bombing as one of the features that may identify an organization as a cult. When used by critics, the phrase is defined to mean affection that is feigned or with an ulterior motive and that is used to reduce the subject's resistance to recruitment.

The term was popularized by psychology professor Margaret Singer, who has become closely identified with the love-bombing-as-brainwashing point of view. She used the term in 1981 when testifying in a lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Mail. (The Unification Church had sued the newspaper for libel, in regard to stories the newspaper had published about David Adler's experiences with the church). In her testimony Singer said that she had interviewed over five hundred members of various sects, about half of them members of the Unification Church. She said that the church's use of a showering of intense affection was more effective than the brainwashing techniques used by the North Koreans on prisoners of war. In a 1996 book entitled Cults in Our Midst, she described the technique thus:

As soon as any interest is shown by the recruits, they may be love bombed by the recruiter or other cult members. This process of feigning friendship and interest in the recruit was originally associated with one of the early youth cults, but soon it was taken up by a number of groups as part of their program for luring people in. Love bombing is a coordinated effort, usually under the direction of leadership, that involves long-term members' flooding recruits and newer members with flattery, verbal seduction, affectionate but usually nonsexual touching, and lots of attention to their every remark. Love bombing - or the offer of instant companionship - is a deceptive ploy accounting for many successful recruitment drives.

Church opponents criticize the practice as contrived; more severe critics condemn it as manipulation and, when used, an insidious element of mind control. Based on his own personal experience as a Unification Church member, Steven Hassan describes the process of "love bombing" in his book Combatting Cult Mind Control.

This view of love bombing is strongly rejected by the groups involved, who take exception to the assertions that the interest and friendship are "feigned," that it is a "coordinated effort," that it amounts to "verbal seduction," that it is "part of program for luring people in," or that it is a "deceptive ploy."

Damian Anderson, a well-known Unification Church blogger, writes:

One man's love-bombing is another man's being showered with attention. Everyone likes such care and attention, so it is unfortunate that when we love as Jesus taught us to love, that we are then accused of having ulterior motives.

Evolutionary Psychology perspective

Some, if not most, of those who practice love bombing are sincere. But when considering the effects on the brain modules of the recipient of "love bombing," the intentions or sincerity of those supplying the intense attention are immaterial.

Dr. Hans Breiter, a neuroscientist at Harvard University, states that "Some people seem to be born with vulnerable dopamine systems that get hijacked by social rewards."

Keith Henson has attempted to explain in evolutionary psychology terms how love bombing works. It is based on the idea that the brain evolved in a social context and that attention from others acts as a reward for reasons rooted in stone age evolution.

"It should come as no surprise that this powerful reward mechanism can be taken over by drug-induced rewards, but this is not the only way the brain reward system can be hijacked. Memes . . . which manifest as cults and related social movements, have "discovered" the brain's reward system as well. Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors. Tripping the detectors causes the release of reward chemicals . . . . Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.

References

1. "1999 Testimony of Ronald N. Loomis to the Maryland Cult Task Force".
2. "Sun Myung Moon (1978) "We Who Have Been Called To Do God's Work" Speech in London, England".
3. "The Children of God: The Inside Story". Term used in memoir about the 1970s Texas Soul Clinic, predecessor of the Children of God.
4. "Eyewitness: Why people join cults". Term used by Kristina Jones in recollections of her mother, an early Children of God
5. Building Resistance: Tactics for Counteracting Manipulation and Unethical Hypnosis in Totalistic Groups When people perceive that someone likes them or cares about them, they listen less critically to what is told to them and are also less apt to think negatively about the communicator.
6. Richardson, James T. (2004). Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe. Springer. ISBN 0306478870. p. 479: "One particular California psychologist, Margaret Singer, has been involved in offering testimony supporting cult brainwashing theories in over 40 such cases.... Such testimony, even though apparently effective, has drawn the ire of some scholar studying newer religions. These scholars claimed that such testimony should be disallowed because it does not represent a consensus position of scholars in the relevant fields of study, and it disregards considerable evidence that participation is virtually always a volitional act."
7. "Moon's Sect Loses Libel Suit in London," The New York Times, April 1, 1981 p. A1: Singer using the term in testimony.
8. Singer, Margaret (1996; 2003) Cults in Our Midst. Revised edition, 2003. Wiley. ISBN 0-7879-6741-6
9. "Damian Anderson (1996) "Responses to Questions on Unificationism on the Internet - Volume 20"".
10. Quoted in Hijacking the Brain Circuits With a Nickel Slot Machine By SANDRA BLAKESLEE, New York Times February 19, 2002.
11. From Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people, and what might be done to mitigate the effects, The Human Nature Review, 2002 Volume 2: 343-355.

See also

• Anti-cult terms and concepts
• New religious movements
• Mind control methods
• Brainwashing techniques
• Unification Church
• Children of God