The youth’s ideas about personal development training (on the example of the RUDN students)*

Over the past decades, the desire for self-development and success have become an integral part of the Russian society, and personal development trainings have become a tool to realize this desire, as its participants and organizers believe. However, along with professional trainings conducted by certified specialists (psychologists), there are also those that can cause such serious harm to health (mental and physical) that they are called “psychocults” (as a form of sect). The youth as a group striving the most to achieve success in life and high-status positions are also most susceptible to involvement in psychocults often hidden under the neutral names of personal development training. The article aims at identifying the ideas of the Moscow youth (on the example of the RUDN students) about personal development training. The authors proceeded from the hypothesis about the positive attitude of students to personal development training, which creates a potential danger of involving young people in psychocults “pretending” to be such trainings. Based on the works of Russian and foreign researchers, the article outlines the main characteristics of personal development training, including those that are similar with psychocults. The empirical part of the article is presented by the results of two focus groups and a sociological survey on a representative quota sample (N=500), which indicate a high level of students’ awareness about personal development trainings and marathons of desires and the youth’s interest in participating in them. Based on the empirical study, the authors present a “portrait” of the participant in personal development trainings and differences in students’ perceptions of trainings, marathons and sects: marathons of desires, rather than personal development trainings, are associated with psychocults (sects) due to common negative connotations and similar “portraits” of their participants (led, lonely, unsuccessful), which indicates high risks of the youth involvement in psychocults pretending to be harmless personal development trainings. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.