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Is Texas group a religious sect or clear-cut cult?
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Lethal leaders
Charisma is in some ways what gives cult leaders such power.
"The charismatic leader doesn't necessarily need to verify things; it's often based on trust," said Barnshaw, the University of Delaware researcher. "That person is often the lawgiver. They decide on what is right and what is wrong."
With that power, cult leaders have persuaded or otherwise convinced members to take extreme measures to reach some sort of salvation. Some cults do things that make them more clearly deserving of the label of cult. For the Heaven's Gate cult, Marshall Applewhite sold his message to 38 members who in March 1997 took their own lives with the promise that suicide would allow them to shed their bodily "containers." They were to hitch a ride on a spacecraft hidden behind the comet Hale-Bopp to reach a higher existence.
The leader of the Branch Davidians changed his name from Vernon Howell to David (after King David of the Israelites) Koresh (from the Babylonian King Cyrus). Rumors and later reports from ex-cult members suggested Koresh married several members, some in their mid-teens, and sexually and physically abused members. Rather than the apocalypse Koresh spoke of, a 1993 FBI raid on their Waco, Texas, compound left 76 dead, more or less resulting in the disappearnce of the group.
In Lalich's view, the distinction between a legitimate sect and a cult is simple: It depends on what or whom you worship.
"In a healthy or legitimate religion or sect, you are presumably worshiping some higher principle or some higher authority," Lalich said, "whereas in a cult people tend to end up worshipping that living human leader."
She added, "Your salvation is tied up with that particular living leader, and obeying orders and not breaking the rules, and subjecting yourself to whatever personal transformation you're expected to go through to be on that correct path to salvation."
Today show
Why members stay 
April 8: Carolyn Jessop, who was one of the wives of a polygamist-sect leader, talks with TODAY's Matt Lauer about life on a fundamentalist compound.
Once they become members of a cult, individuals become more and more isolated from society and from reality-checks found in a diverse world.
"You take on new reality, this new interpretation of the world," Lalich said. "It doesn’t mean you have to live in a compound in the middle of Texas. But you've closed your world view. Everything you're interpreting, you're interpreting through the cultic belief system."
One former member of the Eldorado group echoed this.
"Once you go into the compound, you don't ever leave it,'' Carolyn Jessop, an ex-FLDS member, told The Associated Press. Jessop was one of the wives of the alleged leader of the Eldorado complex, before leaving in 2004.
One reason for the seeming lifelong loyalty, Lalich suspects, is fear.
"A lot of these groups operate on fear. You're afraid of whatever punishment you might get from the group," Lalich said. "But more so, you're afraid that you're going to be missing out on that path to salvation, whatever that salvation might be."
Often, Barnshaw said, cult members are made to believe the outside world is evil. The leaders will set up a dynamic of "insider versus outsider," and "interworldly versus otherworldly." This internal world "is the path to righteousness, as opposed to the external world, which is wicked and harmful and detrimental to our society," Barnshaw said.
Regarding the FLDS group in Texas, this type of lens apparently was a powerful force. "There was a strong distrust of anyone who this group perceived as being an outsider," Barnshaw said.
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