 In the 1970s, the anti-cult movement applied the concept of brainwashing to explain seemingly sudden and dramatic religious conversions to various new religious movements (NRMs) and other groups that they considered cults.News media reports tended to support the brainwashing view and social scientists sympathetic to the anti-cult movement, who were usually psychologists, developed revised models of mind control.While some psychologists were receptive to the concept, sociologists were for the most part skeptical of its ability to explain conversion to NRMs.