Time & Location
Nov 18, 2026, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Guilford Hall Brewery, 1611 Guilford Ave, Baltimore, MD 21202, USA
About the event
Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Power of Cults,” on how cults operate, recruit members, and get people to stay, with Mariah Wilkerson, adjunct professor of psychology at George Mason University.
[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating.]
Most people believe that they’d never join a cult, yet cults have existed for thousands of years and continue to pop up all over the world.
What makes people join cults and why is it so hard to leave them? Hear these and other questions about cults tackled by Mariah Wilkerson, a social psychologist with a deep interest in them.
Dr. Wilkerson will take you inside the psychology of cults, both demystifying them and busting common myths about them.
She’ll describe how cults grab people's attention by co-opting religious doctrine or messaging around current social issues. Once people are drawn in, cults use simple, yet…