Cult inexactly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the mainstream, with a notably positive or negative popular perception. In common or populist usage, "cult" has a positive connotation for groups of artistic and fashion devotees, but a negative connotation for new religious and extreme political movements. For this reason, most, if not all, religious and political groups that are called cults reject this label.
A group's populist cult status begins as rumors of its novel belief system, its great devotions, its idiosyncratic practices, its perceived harmful or beneficial effects on members, or its perceived opposition to the interests of mainstream cultures and governments. Cult rumors most often refer to artistic and fashion movements of passing interest, but persistent rumors escalate popular concern about relatively small and recently founded religious movements, or non-religious groups, perceived to engage in excessive member control or exploitation.
Some anthropologists and sociologists studying cults have argued that no one has yet been able to define “cult” in a way that enables the term to identify only groups that have been identified as problematic. However, without the "problematic" concern, scientific criteria of characteristics attributed to cults do exist. A little-known example is the Alexander and Rollins, 1984, scientific study concluding that the socially well-received group Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult, yet Vaillant, 2005, further concluded that AA is beneficial.
Laypersons participate in cultic studies to a degree not found in other academic disciplines, making it difficult to demarcate the boundaries of science from theology, politics, news reporting, fashion, and family cultural values. From about 1920 onward, the populist negative connotation progressively interfered with scientific study using the neutral historical meaning of "cult" in the sociology of religion. A 20th century attempt by sociologists to replace "cult" with the term New Religious Movement (NRM), was rejected by the public and only partly accepted by the scientific community.
During the 20th century groups referred to as cults by governments and media became globally controversial. The televised rise and fall of less than 20 Destructive cults known for mass suicide and murder tarred hundreds of NRM groups having less serious government and civil legal entanglements, against a background of thousands of unremarkable NRM groups known only to their neighbors. Following the Solar Temple destructive cult incidents on two continents, France authorized the 1995 Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France. This commission set a mostly non-controversial standard for human rights objections to exploitative group practices, and mandated a controversial remedy for cultic abuse, known in English as cult watching, which was quietly adopted by other countries. The United States responded with human rights challenges to French cult control policies, and France charged the U.S. with interferring in French internal affairs. In recent years, France's troublesome public cult watching lists appear to have been retired in favor of confidential police intelligence gathering.