Large Group Awareness Training

Large Group Awareness Training or LGAT is a mechanism for promoting awareness change and rapid, thorough commitment to a cause or idea. LGATs tend to be brief but intense sessions of a few hours or days in which, ideally, participants adopt the message of the 'training' promptly and enthusiastically.

Some see the classic LGAT as utilizing peer pressure and group dynamics in a high-pressure sales environment that promotes uncritical psycho-babbling togetherness and thus markets nebulous memes, and as fostering a propensity to recruit new participants into a participation-oriented pyramid scheme under the guise of providing useful training.

Others see LGAT as a group mind methodology that can be used to accelerate training in specific skills. Improvisational comedy is an example of a skill that is, typically, taught via group-awareness training.

Historically, LGAT origins trace back, at least in part, to the encounter group movement of the 1960s.

Alleged LGATs include:

• Context Associates
• est/Landmark Education
• Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)
• Exegesis
• Garden Company
• Insight
• Lifespring
• ManKind Project
• Momentus
• Training Phoenix 2000
• PSI World
• Silva Method
• Sterling Institute of Relationships
• Whole Mind Learning (WML)
• Life Training / Kairos Foundation

See Also

• Pyramid scheme
• Marketing
• Multi-level marketing

External reference and links

• Fisher, J.D. et al. (1990). Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training: A Longitudinal Study of Psychosocial Effects. Springer-Verlag.
• LGAT - or Large Group Awareness Training
• http://caic.org.au/psyther/lgat/singer.htm
• A University of Leeds research summary