Large Group Awareness Training (or LGAT) refers to the training methods used by some companies, in what has been referred to as the human potential movement. By using the LGAT techniques, these companies claim to increase self-awareness and manifest positive personal changes in individuals' lives.

Definition
Lou Kilzer, in The Rocky Mountain News, claimed that Leadership Dynamics was the first of the genre of what psychologists termed "Large Group Awareness Training"

Evolution
"Large Group Awareness Training", a 1982 peer-reviewed article published in Annual Review of Psychology, sought to summarize literature on the subject and examine its efficacy and relationship to more standard psychology. This article was one of the first academic works to analyze and describe large group awareness training from a psychological perspective. Influenced by the work of humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Rollo May and often considered part of the human potential movement, LGAT's are commercial trainings that took many techniques from encounter groups. Existing alongside but "outside the domains of academic psychology or psychiatry. Their measure of performance was consumer satisfaction and formal research was seldom pursued." Finkelstein's article explicitly mentioned Lifespring and Actualizations, using the example of Erhard Seminars Training ("est") as a typical LGAT.
The article describes an est training, and discusses the literature on the testimony of est graduates. It notes minor changes on psychological tests after the training and mentions anecdotal reports of psychiatric casualties among est trainees. The article considers how est compares to more standard psychotherapy techniques such as behavior therapy, group and existential psychotherapy before concluding that "objective and rigorous research" was needed and that unknown variables might have accounted for some of the positive accounts. Borderline or psychotic patients were advised by psychologists not to participate.

Academic analysis, studies
Finkelstein's 1982 article provides a detailed description of the structure and techniques of an Erhard Seminars Training, noting the unusual authoritarian demeanor of the trainer, the physical strains of a long schedule on the participants and the similary of many techniques to those used in some group therapy and encounter groups.

Techniques
Finkelstein noted the many difficulties in evaluating LGAT's, from proponents' explicit rejection of certain study models to difficulty in establishing a rigorous control group.

Evaluations of LGATs
The American Psychological Association commissioned, subsequently rejected,