Groupthink

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Groupthink is a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis in 1972 to describe one 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. This results in a situation in which the group ultimately agrees on an action which each member might normally consider to be unwise.

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 ideological novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Groupthink tends to occur on committees and in large organizations, and has been cited as a contributing factor in the Vietnam War, Bay of Pigs Invasion, both the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster and the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the bankruptcy of Enron, and more recently, the Congress' decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003.

Signs of groupthink include:

Examining few alternatives
Not seeking expert or outside opinions
Being highly selective in gathering information (See confirmation bias and selection bias)
An illusion of invulnerability
Strong belief in group's inherent morality
Rationalizing poor decisions (See cognitive dissonance)
Pressure to conform within group; members withold criticisms
Pressure to protect group from negative views or information
Overt external or internal pressure to come to a decision
Individual group members look to each other to confirm theories

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 pre-selected 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). Finally, 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 with no individual being seen to do so. Thus the social capital of the group is preserved, as every member has plausible deniability that they raised a dissenting point.

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.

Table of contents

1 External resources
2 See also
3 External links

External resources

Janis, Irving. Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. ISBN 0395140447
Schwartz, John and 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 ( reprinted in http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Smart-People-Dumber9mar03.htm ).