Groupthink

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Groupthink is a term widely (and mistakenly) attrbuted to psychologist Irving Janis. As William Safire pointed out in the NYTimes Magazine (August 8, 2004), it was coined in 1952 by William H. Whyte in Fortune Magazine.

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In 1972 Janis used the term to describe a process by which a group can make bad or irrational decisions. In a groupthink situation, each member of the group attempts to conform his or her opinions to what they believe to be the consensus of the group. In a general sense this seems to be a rational way to approach the situation. However this results in a situation in which the group ultimately agrees upon an action which each member might individually consider to be unwise (the risky shift).

Janis' original definition of the term was "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action." The word groupthink was intended to be reminiscent of George Orwell's coinages (such as doublethink and duckspeak) from the fictional language Newspeak, which he portrayed in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Groupthink tends to occur on committees and in large organizations. Janis originally studied the Pearl Harbor bombing, the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Recently, in 2004, the US Senate Intelligence Committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq blamed groupthink for failures to correctly interpret intelligence relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.Template:Ref

A crucial facet of the groupthink phenomenon is that it is a Pathology, and that any group so organized is dysfunctional. Generally speaking, the members of any group suffering from this pathology will not only disregard advice contrary to their views, they cannot even comprehend it.

Despite the intuitive and romantic appeal of traditional groupthink theory, it does not fare well when compared to simpler psychological explanations of group decision making.

Contents

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Causes and symptoms of groupthink

Janis cited three antecedent conditions that would be likely to encourage groupthink. These are:

  • High stress from external threats with low hope of a better solution than the one offered by the leader(s)
  • High group cohesiveness
  • The persuasive strength of the group's leader

Social psychologist Clark McCauley noted three conditions that he felt were involved when groupthink occurs:

  • Directive leadership
  • Homogeneity of members' social background and ideology
  • Insulation of the group from outside sources of information and analysis

Janis listed eight symptoms that he said were indicative of groupthink:

  1. Illusion of invulnerability
  2. Unquestioned belief in the inherent morality of the group
  3. Collective rationalization of group's decisions
  4. Shared stereotypes of outgroup, particularly opponents
  5. Self-censorship; members withhold criticisms
  6. Illusion of unanimity (see false consensus effect)
  7. Direct pressure on dissenters to conform
  8. Self-appointed "mindguards" protect the group from negative information

Finally, the seven symptoms of decision affected by groupthink are:

  1. Incomplete survey of alternatives
  2. Incomplete survey of objectives
  3. Failure to examine risks of preferred choice
  4. Failure to re-appraise initially rejected alternatives
  5. Poor information search
  6. Selective bias in processing information at hand (see also confirmation bias)
  7. Failure to work out contingency plans
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Preventing groupthink

One mechanism which management consultants recommend to avoid groupthink is to place responsibility and authority for a decision in the hands of a single person who can turn to others for advice. Others advise that a preselected individual take the role of disagreeing with any suggestion presented, thereby making other individuals more likely to present their own ideas and point out flaws in others' — and reducing the stigma associated with being the first to take negative stances (see Devil's Advocate).

Anonymous feedback via suggestion box or online chat has been found to be a useful remedy for groupthink — negative or dissenting views of proposals can be raised without any individual being identifiable by others as having lodged a critique. Thus the social capital of the group is preserved, as all members have plausible deniability that they raised a dissenting point.

Institutional mechanisms such as an inspector general system can also play a role in preventing groupthink as all participants have the option of appealing to an individual outside the decision-making group who has the authority to stop non-constructive or harmful trends.

Another possibility is giving each participant in a group a piece of paper, this is done randomly and without anyone but the receiver being able to read it. Two of the pieces of paper have "dissent" written on them, the others are blank. People have to dissent if the paper says so (like a Devil's Advocate), no-one is able to know if the other person is expressing dissent because they received a pre-marked "dissent" piece of paper or because it's an honest dissent. Also, as with every Devil's Advocate, there exists the possibility that the person adopting this role would think about the problem in a way that they wouldn't have if not under that role, and so promoting creative and critical thought.

Another way which is of special use in very asymmetric relations (as in a classroom) is to say something which is essentially wrong or false, having given (or being obvious that the persons that may be groupthinking know about that) the needed information to realize its inconsistency previously, if at the start of the class the teacher told the students that he would do so and not tell them when he did until the end of the class, they would be stimulated to criticize and "process" information instead of merely assimilating it.

An alternative to groupthink is a formal consensus decision-making process, which works best in a group whose aims are cooperative rather than competitive, where trust is able to build up, and where participants are willing to learn and apply facilitation skills.

Groupthink, and its related dysfunctional group behavior, the Abilene Paradox, wherein groups agree to pursue goals with which the individual members do not agree, continue to fascinate researchers in the field of Social sciences. The reason for this fascination is that these theories appear to explain the observed behavior of individuals and groups in many social contexts. For example, some researchers point to the Bay of Pigs Invasion as the archetype of the groupthink phenomenon. They note that the decision to execute this disastrous military campaign was made with almost unanimous agreement by President John F. Kennedy and his advisors. These advisors were, almost without exception, very similar in background to the President: wealthy, white men from privileged families and possessing educations from Ivy League universities. General David M. Shoup, Commandant of the Marine Corps at the time and not part of the privileged group, predicted failure and enormous casualties for the invasion, and practically begged the President not to undertake it. Shoup's professional advice was ignored by the group, and the group's decision to conduct the invasion went forward with disastrous results.

Such dysfunctional pathology in groups is a well-known social phenomenon, and all groups should automatically take steps to avoid it. These steps generally involve the inclusion of individuals with diverse backgrounds in the decision-making process, and a pointedly self-critical outlook by the individuals comprising the group. Groups so comprised generally make better decisions than more homogeneous groups, and generally speaking, are capable of making higher-quality decisions that avoid disasters such as this.

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Criticism

Recent research suggests that the observed phenomena are better accounted for by less grandiose theories. An excerpt from Professor Robert S. Baron’s 2005 review:

A review of the research and debate regarding Janis's groupthink model leads to the conclusion that after some 30 years of investigation, the evidence has largely failed to support the formulation's more ambitious and controversial predictions, specifically those linking certain antecedent conditions with groupthink phenomena. Moreover, research in the years since the theory's inception indicates that most of the "groupthink" phenomena described by Janis occur in a far wider range of group settings than he originally envisioned. Collectively, these data strongly suggest that Janis erred when identifying the necessary and sufficient antecedent conditions for groupthink. A ubiquity model of groupthink is introduced that specifies a revised set of antecedent conditions to explain why groupthink-like behavior occurs in mundane, temporary, and even minimal groups and yet is not an invariant feature of group decision making.

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Notes

Template:NoteThe Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in its July 2004 unanimous report that "the Intelligence Community (IC) suffered from a collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. This "group think" dynamic led Intelligence Community analysts, collectors, and managers, to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs. This presumption was so strong that formalized IC mechanisms established to challenge assumptions and group think were not utilized."

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References

  • Baron, R. S. (2005). So Right It's Wrong: Groupthink and the Ubiquitous Nature of Polarized Group Decision Making. In Zanna, Mark P (Ed.) Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 37. (pp. 219-253). San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press.
  • Janis, I. (1972). Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395140447
  • Janis, I. & Mann, L. (1977). Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice and Commitment. New York: The Free Press.
  • Schwartz, John & Wald, Matthew L. Smart People Working Collectively can be Dumber Than the Sum of their Brains: "Groupthink" Is 30 Years Old, and Still Going Strong. New York Times March 9, 2003. Full Reprint here.
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See also

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External links

de:Gruppendenken es:Pensamiento de grupo fr:Pensée de groupe no:Gruppetenk pl:Syndrom grupowego myślenia

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