Assessment of coercive persuasion: the Scale of Detection of Coercive Persuasion in Group Contexts (EDPC)

Abstract

Coercive persuasion refers to the control and manipulation developed by abusive groups, through different aggressive strategies that influence changes in the environment of its members, distorting cognition, altering emotions and generating significant psychosocial damage. It is a subtle, gradual and powerful force that affects around 500,000 Spanish victims of cultic groups (Cuevas & Perlado, 2011; Cuevas, 2012). Attaining power is one of the main goals of these groups, being the control and exploitation of the individual a part of the process. This derives to individuals giving up their own goals, freedom, material possessions, family and social networks, health or even life itself (Rodríguez-Carballeira, Saldaña, Almendros, Martin-Peña, Escartín, & Porrúa-Garcia, 2015). Such strategies are often implemented in a planned, graduate way and using deceit, difficulting that people who targeted are able to detect their evident aggressiveness and the generated damage. If there is an obvious shortage of instruments measuring psychological abuse in different fields (partner violence, harassment, bullying, etc.), the development of tools to assess the presence of such strategies in group contexts is even more scarce (Almendros, Gámez-Guadix, Carrobles & Rodríguez Carballeira, 2011). One of those assessment tools, the Interview for Detection of Coercive Persuasion (Cuevas & Canto, 2006) contains a wide range of coercive and abusive practises taking place within manipulative group. It has been applied in Spain in the forensic field in prosecutions of abusive groups (Dharma Tradición, Casa Yoga, Miguelianos, Revelance, etc.). The main objective of this recently validated tool (Cuevas, 2016) was to identify and provide evidences of the systematic application of coercive persuasion techniques on victims of abusive groups (Cuevas, 2012, 2016). Deriving from this instrument, sharing objectives, a new scale of 40 items and validated in Spanish population: the Scale of Detection of Coercive Persuasion in Group Contexts, or EDPC (Cuevas, 2016 ). To validate the EDPC, a Spanish sample of 134 people who identified themselves as having been abused or having been overly controlled by a group was selected. To assess criterion validity of the instrument, other different instruments (BSI MOS-SSS, RSE, SLEQ, ICP and EDS) were used. The group psychological abuse scale GPA (Chambers, Langone, Dole, & Grice, 1994), Spanish modified version (Almendros et al.,2004; Almendros et al., 2009) was used to assess the convergent validity of the instrument. The EDPC showed appropriate psychometric properties. In respect to reliability, the standardized Cronbach alpha coefficient reached a value of 0.97. The exploratory factorial analysis indicated the presence of a factor (coercive persuasion), establishing the suitability of a one-dimensional model. This scale aims to be useful in clinical and forensic fields, in order to assess the control and manipulation exercised in group contexts. Using it could be relevant to provide evidences of coercive groups practises, helping at trying to determinate the relationship between damage on the victims and the specific actions taken by groups or individuals who perform the abusive behaviors.