# BITE Model **Summary.** The BITE Model is a framework for identifying undue influence in high-control groups. Counselor Steven Hassan developed it to map the four kinds of control such groups use. It gives this wiki a concrete checklist for naming coercive patterns instead of relying on vague labels. --- ## The four kinds of control Hassan, a former member of the Unification Church, first laid out the framework in *Combating Cult Mind Control* (1988) and later expanded it. BITE stands for four areas a controlling group seeks to govern: - **Behavior control.** Regulating what members do — where they live, how they spend money and time, whom they associate with, and what they eat or wear. - **Information control.** Limiting access to outside sources, discouraging questions, and using deception or withheld facts to shape what members know. - **Thought control.** Installing loaded language and thought-stopping techniques, teaching members to reject critical thinking as disloyalty or sin. - **Emotional control.** Manipulating feelings through fear, guilt, and shame, and treating doubt or dissent as a personal or spiritual failing. Hassan's point is that no single item proves a group is abusive. The model asks about the *degree* of control across all four areas. Healthy communities allow members to leave, ask questions, and disagree without losing their standing. High-control groups tighten each area until exit feels impossible. The framework draws on earlier work by Robert Jay Lifton and Margaret Singer on coercive persuasion. Hassan's contribution was to organize the tactics into a usable diagnostic tool. --- ## Why it matters in this wiki The BITE Model gives language for [[Spiritual Abuse]] as a system, not just isolated bad acts. Applied to movements like the [[New Apostolic Reformation]], it exposes how apostolic authority can pair thought control (prophetic covering, warnings against independent judgment) with emotional control (fear of spiritual attack). It pairs well with [[DARVO]], which describes how such groups respond when a member finally names the harm. --- ## Related - [[DARVO]] - [[Spiritual Abuse]] - [[New Apostolic Reformation]]