I’m on a bit of an Adam Grant kick lately. Another topic he has discussed is when we apply negative forces to motivate others to comply with our way of thinking. He identifies several of these motivation tactics, and why they don’t work:
- Scare tactics
- Withholding love
- Telling me it’s for my own good
- Trying to make it seem like it was my idea
- Yelling
- Demeaning
- Withholding support
- Lecturing
- Manipulation
- Not listening to what I have to say
- Dismissing my feelings
- Dismissing my ideas
- Belittling me
- Withholding my respect
- Passive aggressiveness
- Shaming
One problem with using negative motivation tactics is that we are likely to get compliance but not “conversion,” meaning they will do what we say until we are gone. They are only doing it because they feel compelled, not because they agree it’s a good thing or something they would promote. They are caving to pressure to conform. It’s a superficial agreement. It may still not be easy for them to say no, but eventually, they will realize that they’ve been pushed into something they didn’t want. Ultimately, they will resent that. They may even want to exact revenge. Their feelings about what happened, and toward the person or group who used these tactics, will not be positive.
When we use threats or attempt to create fear in others, that only works until/unless they overcome that fear or see that the threat didn’t happen. For example, a parent who says “Wait until your father gets home!” is relying on the idea that the absent father is going to exact some sort of punishment that the child wants to avoid. If the father does not, this is an empty threat. The other parent’s authority is reduced because the thing they claimed would happen did not. I’m also not advocating making good on threats! If you have to employ a punishment to change behavior, then the thing you wanted the person to do was insufficiently compelling absent physically forcing them to do it. It’s still a weak reason to do the thing. Kids who are physically bullied by parents often find that once they have an adult body, they can turn the tables and protect themselves from this physical intimidation. They are no longer subject to physical force of will. This is one of the reasons that this scripture, often trotted out, but seldom adhered to, is so powerful:
39 We have learned by sad experience that it is the anature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little bauthority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise cunrighteous dominion.
40 Hence many are called, but afew are chosen.
41 No apower or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the bpriesthood, only by cpersuasion, by dlong-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;
42 By akindness, and pure bknowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the csoul without dhypocrisy, and without eguile—
Doctrine & Covenants 121: 39-43
When I was growing up, there was a family who converted to the Church. We were a close-knit group of kids in our branch that spanned six different high schools. Their son Jim was my age, and we all quickly became good friends with him, and he was part of all of our social activities. My friends and I usually drove to nearby Lancaster to go to a dance club on the weekends, and when we were meeting up by the Soldiers and Sailors monument, we ran into Jim. We were all excited to see him since it was unusual to run into church friends in public. We crossed the street to say hello, and while he seemed happy to see us, he was also nervously looking down the street. He quickly explained that his parents had left the Church and forbidden him to have any contact with any of us again. It had happened so recently that none of us even knew they had quit coming to church. We were sad to lose our friend, but also felt bad that his parents had cut ties so completely. Why would they do that?
It’s not like we didn’t know other people who had left the Church in a cloud of bitterness. We had even seen someone get up at Church and renounce its teaching over the pulpit in a fast and testimony meeting. It was not uncommon in our regional area to have new converts suddenly turn cold and never show up again at church. But it always hurt when it happened. And this was at least a decade before the Church’s anti-LGBT push, and its more overt politicization. Regardless of the reason, many people who leave the Church are often angry about it.
If, as a parent, when your children reach adulthood, they suddenly cut ties with you and want nothing to do with you, this should give you pause. Even if it’s not all of your children, even if it’s just one child. Exit stories from a church (which is far more voluntary than a family) should also give us pause. Just like a company should pay attention to why employees leave, so should all of us. Why were they in? What changed their mind? If they leave and feel somewhat neutral about their experience, that’s one thing. If they leave and are angry about it or seek to take down the organization, this isn’t a reason to dismiss them, but a reason to listen and find out why.
Were the types of tactics identified above by Adam Grant used to keep them in the Church? By whom? Did the Church as an institution use or approve these tactics? Did members? Or did the person’s family do so? Was this manipulation and bullying ignored and enabled or preached against?
Toxic environments are revealed in exit interviews with those that left. While these apply to the workplace, they also apply to other organizations (and even families):
1. Toxicity: people are treated like dirt
2. Mediocrity: low standards
3. Bureaucracy: all rules, no risks
4. Anarchy: pure chaos
Adam Grant
Of course these tactics don’t always result in someone leaving the Church. Sometimes, they feel like a natural, acceptable part of life, possibly particularly true if one’s home life mirrors this negative approach. There was a recent ex-Mo Twitter discussion about the exlusivity of the temple sealing, and that it creates a lot of angst and negative feelings toward the Church when family members are barred from witnessing their loved one’s marriage ceremony because they either aren’t members, are children, or do not have a temple recommend. The Church’s policy was substantially improved when it was changed to allow a civil ceremony for public participation and didn’t punish the couple with a year-long waiting period thereafter to complete the temple sealing. However, many couples continue to bar unendowed family members from weddings. That’s at least their choice now, although it will probably result in some hurt feelings.
This policy (and its slight shift) is an example of a relaxing of a punitive policy designed to motivate behavior. It specifically motivated many parents who didn’t have a temple recommend to pay up so they could get one, for example. I doubt it motivated any non-members to join, but it did create some distance between members and non-members within families, marginalizing the influence of the non-members on the members who had excluded them.
In general, whenever something was in the temple recommend process and no longer is, it’s evidence of reducing negative motivation. However, most of my adult life I’ve seen the expansion of negative motivation: adding requirements to the temple recommend interview, making a temple recommend a requirement for certain callings, and ratcheting up the ecclesiastical interview process at BYU, to name a few.
- What do you think the Church can learn from exit narratives? Has it learned some of these lessons? Can you give examples of changes made?
- Have you seen these types of negative motivation tactics? What was the result?
- Have you used these tactics? In what context?
- Do you see the Church becoming more or less reliant on negative motivation?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
My own formulation: A good Mormon is a judgmental Mormon; a very good Mormon is a very judgmental Mormon. And that judgmental mindset broadcasts itself in all the negative ways identified in the BadMo Bingo grid.
The kinder, gentler approach to being a Mormon Christian championed by Pres. Uchtdorf seems to be in full retreat.
I guess some people are motivated by reward and some people are motivated by fear. The Church plays on both of these motivations by using the family as a focal point. If you are exalted, you can live with your family forever. If you blow it, you will be separated from your family. That’s a terrific promise and a significant threat wrapped into one.
Ironically, this issue was one of the main breaking points for me. It just makes no sense to me that a loving God, a loving father, would break up loving families over their earthly choices that often seem quite rational to the person making the choice. My kids (now all adults) have very rational reasons for leaving the COJCOLDS. And my wife and I were still active and watching this and wondering why our heaven had to be so sad due to our kids’ fairly well-thought-out reasons for distancing from the Church.
In other words, what was once a promise (“Families can be together forever”) to me became a real threat (“you’ll lose your family if you don’t all keep your covenants”) and that threat made no sense to me and was instrumental in leading me out as well. So instead of letting the fear factor drive me nuts I eliminated the source of the fear from my life and our family has never been happier.
The church refuses to listen to people who leave, so of course the church isn’t learning anything. Instead of wondering why people who leave “can’t leave the church alone” they mock those people for being angry. See, they are angry evil people and that is why they left.
No, stupid church leaders, they left for good reasons and are angry that the church makes them into the evil apostates to be avoided by friends and family. They leave because you treated them like children who are too stupid to make informed choices, and they are angry because you lied about church history. Or maybe they left because you treat women like second class members and they are angry because the church makes them evil for wanting to be treated as real people who are just as worthy of priesthood as men. Or maybe they leave because the church refuses to see its own faults and they are angry that the church excommunicates people who point out real problems.
And I really want to use that bingo card next general conference.
More simply put, this sounds like the classic carrot vs. stick dichotomy. And the Church will continue to rely on sticks because it is nearly out of carrots.
Like josh h, I’ve come to find peace and contentment by purposefully rejecting any fear-based teaching/doctrine that comes from the Church. But getting to that point was a years-long deconstruction process, with a lot of cognitive dissonance and heartbreak along the way. It was especially challenging for me because I naturally have scrupulous/OCD tendencies, so I used to find comfort in the mechanical, bureaucratic and rules-based approach to personal salvation the Church offers, while at the same time working myself into a ball of depression and anxiety because I could never meet the impossible standard. A religious organization that carries the name of Christ, but relies on fear as a primary motivational/teaching tool, is the height of hypocrisy.
Anna: “Or maybe they leave because the church refuses to see its own faults and they are angry that the church excommunicates people who point out real problems.” This x 1000. And I agree with the OP that I, too, have seen an increase in negative motivations during my time in the church. And I think Anna puts her finger on why this is so: The church has decided (quite a long time ago) that the key to keeping people in the church is not positive reinforcement but rather fear of consequences. And sometimes it’s hard to spot. Take eternal marriage, e.g. You get to be sealed to your beloved for all eternity so that you’ll never be separated and so that, if you end up in the celestial kingdom, you’ll get to be with your family forever, you have the potential to become gods, you’ll never be separated from those you love, etc. Putting aside the distinctly patriarchal aspects of the Mormon afterlife, many true believers have those objectives and desires. So that’s great, right? You get to be with those you love forever. Sounds like positive reinforcement to me. But it’s not, actually. All of that so-called positivity is actually the church setting you up to be so afraid to lose it that you toe the obedience line. You don’t want to lose your family forever, do you? You don’t want to lose your beloved partner forever, do you? See what I mean? The church is very good at disguising the stick as the carrot.
And that’s just one example. I think the whole obedience culture that’s sprung up lately is also a part of this. Why should we be obedient? Because if we’re not, we’ll lose our temple blessings and be cut off from family forever. The entire concept of obedience itself is based on fear-mongering. “Obey, or else” is essentially the concept; it’s a threat, not an invitation to love or empathy or charity. So the whole thing is about motivating through fear.
“purposefully rejecting any fear-based teaching/doctrine that comes from the Church.” This is what I do as well. I start with the premise that we have a loving Heavenly Father. Anything the goes against that is false. That throws out a lot of Mormon myths.
I literally could put a stamp on each of the Bingo spots.
The mission experience certainly comes to mind as the Exhibit A of negative motivations. It’s not surprising that many of us have very complex relationships with our missions. And it’s no surprise that less youth are serving. What did surprise me was the visceral reactions in the post a few days ago about not buying what you are selling. I had assumed less youth are serving because they don’t want to, but perhaps there’s a parental element there as well. Because I still hear current mission horror stories today that are reminiscent of my experiences 20 years ago. Perhaps there are lots of parents out there feeling that if the mission experience hasn’t improved, they aren’t going to put their kids through what they went through. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since that thought-provoking post.
Because I still have mission nightmares. I served in Hong Kong and I have dreams that China has opened and I am called to leave my family and get there STAT. I always wake up in a cold sweat. It seems there is a level of mission trauma that is manifesting itself in unusual ways as I age.
Otherwise Anna is correct. Our leaders aren’t interested in understanding why lifelong members are leaving. They think they know why, but they don’t. So nothing will change.
Hey Chadwick: You know what rumor I heard way back in the mid-1980s when I was attending BYU? I heard that as soon as China opened up to the Gospel and allowed missionaries, all the RMs who had served in Taiwan would be called back to serve a second mission in China. And then, a second wave would occur in which other RMs who were good with foreign languages would be sent into China. Let’s remember that China is the world’s most populous country so this would take a lot of missionaries to cover. And of course, we’d need a lot of space in the MTC to train everyone. Therefore, the Church was reserving the large space between the MTC and the Provo Temple for the construction of a 2nd Chinese MTC. (Imagine my surprise when around 2010 the Church simply on the MTC grounds). But hey, we still have that big lawn in front of the Provo Temple just in case
I’ve said this previously on a bcc post comments, not wanting to give anyone nightmares… one of the YM in my ward growing up did serve a mission in Taiwan. Not long after he married he was asked by the church to go to China with his wife.. I don’t know how long for, or what it was about, but it was pretty startling at the time.. this would have been in the 90s.
I read through these comments thinking, “yep, that’s me, right, that one too, I could have written Jack Hughes’ second paragraph, josh h and Brother Sky nailed it when they described how eternal families are both a carrot and a stick, Anna calling a spade a spade again – right on, wow Chadwick sorry about the mission trauma – good insight there might be some parental influence on not serving.” Angela’s post really struck a chord.
I don’t know if the New Order Mormon forum is even still around, but I used to constantly lurk there. My favorite thread was the intro thread, where everyone told the stories about why they left. There were lots of mission stories there.
Angela identified why there’s so little member missionary work:
“They are only doing it because they feel compelled, not because they agree it’s a good thing or something they would promote. They are caving to pressure to conform. ”
It’s been a long time since I thought someone’s life would be better if they came to Church (including my own). People can have good lives even without Church – there are loving families and kind people even without the threat of sad heaven. The fear is manipulative, and more and more people are identifying it as such and rejecting it.
(Sorry, Janey. I downvoted your post accidentally.)
Hawkgrrrl: “What do you think the Church can learn from exit narratives?”
I think they’ve changed. There are a lot more fairly positive articles about being married to a spouse who’s left the church. About how to listen better to someone leaving. Etc. I usually don’t like the bottom line on these articles, but this is improvement.
A related question in my mind is, “What do members considering leaving learn from members who have left?” I think this learning is outpacing the church’s. I’m remembering the stay-in-the-boat talk, and people who’ve left pointing out that the water is only knee-deep, and that there is a lot of beauty in the world and in people they didn’t see *until* they got out of the boat.
I recently read “Faith Beyond Doubt” by Brian McLaren. I really loved it, and I’m still on a bit of a high from it. (So I’m about to make a long rambling comment about it) It helped me shape my understanding in a positive way, and helped me to be less angry and feel more at peace. McLaren addresses how churches use sticks and carrots, and how people get disillusioned because the gospel isn’t about sticks or carrots, but that the gospel is truly about love. He breaks it into four stages of faith: (this is an oversimplication based on my memory of a quick read through the book).
Stage 1- People believe and obey out of fear of punishments (they trust the leaders as authorities and give their authority to the leaders. They want to be right, and see others as wrong. They feel must keep all the commandments, or be damned. )
Stage 2- People believe and obey out of hope of blessings and wanting to be on the winning team (They see the leaders as coaches who can help them reap the rewards of a prosperity gospel. They must keep all the commandments or they’ll be missing out on blessings.)
Stage 3- Peopole question their beliefs. (They see the leaders as fallible men. They see leaders and the organization as having their own agenda and manipulating people through fear.) They want to push back against the leaders, call out injustice, and help people be freed from the manipulation.
Stage 4- People are opened to a new way of seeing things, and connect with God, his love, their divinity within, and with Christ’s message of Love. They see that it’s not about being “right”, or “pure” or on the “winning team”. They believe that we’re all on the same team of humanity. What religion they belong to (if they belong to one) isn’t so important, because they have their own moral authority within themselves. They just want to love all people and make the world a better place.
(This also matches up pretty nicely with Kohlberg’s stages of Moral Development, Fowler’s stages of faith, and 15 others who essentially describe the same thing using different words and models.)
McLaren says that most churches operate in the arena of stage 1 and stage 2, and most active members of churches are in stage 1 or stage 2 of faith. If that’s all you’ve ever been taught, then it makes sense that you’ll stay in that stage. Stage 1 and stage 2 work for a lot of people (especially from previous generations), and they work really well at maintaining the status quo. But many people are leaving religion not because they don’t have enough faith, but because they have more faith and are progressing past stage 1 and stage 2 faith into something deeper, and churches don’t really support that.
I don’t think I’m supposed to use the stages to judge other people, but as I’ve attended church and I hear people make comments that I disagree with I now think to myself “Oh, that’s a stage 1 comment. I see how that makes sense from a stage 1 mindset.” “Oh, you’re not lying or making false promises of a prosperity gospel, you see things from a stage 2 mindset, and that’s where you’re operating from.” It’s made me less angry than thinking that people are lying, or trying to manipulate me, or that they are just dumb.
I feel like I’ve been in stage 3 for a while, and that I’m right at the doorway of stage 4. I see it, and I like it, but I don’t really understand it yet, or know anything. But I feel like I am in a place where I’m able to take the authority back to myself from the church/leaders and really just try to follow God and love all people.
Anyways, to make this all relevant to the post, I think that the church should move past it’s stage 1 tactics of trying to motivate people with fear. And I really liked the book. I also really loved Steve Young’s book “The Law of Love” which talks about the same thing in a different way.
Fear was one of the main encouragements to good behavior in the OT. Behave or God will drown you. Obey or God will turn you into a pillar of salt.
The NT has a much mellower message. Be nice. No floods or captivities or pillars of salt. I prefer the NT message.
But I’m not a big fan of “loving your neighbor” because you want to go to the CK. Or the highest kingdom in the CK. Let’s “Do what is right” because it’s the right thing to do. And let the chips fall where they might.
Chadwick: The best remedy to the mission nightmares is to write a mission memoir. I used to have them all the time, but I just don’t anymore. It was like magic!
My wife continues to harbor resentment towards her first mother-in-law who used the Church as the reason she shouldn’t do a lot of things she really wanted to—including and especially continuing her education after she got married. Now remarried after being widowed, my wife recently graduated from the Pathways program, summa cum laude. Unfortunately she can’t really enjoy that accomplishment because it happened 30 years too late.
She is also starting to understand that it wasn’t really the Church that caused all the pain. Her mother-in-law is just a bully, and the Church is her weapon of choice.