Groupthink

Groupthink is sometimes stated to occur (more broadly) within natural groups within the community, for example to explain the lifelong different mindsets of those with differing political views (such as "conservatism" and "liberalism" in the U.S. political context[7] or the purported benefits of team work vs. work conducted in solitude).[8] However, this conformity of viewpoints within a group does not mainly involve deliberate group decision-making, and might be better explained by the collective confirmation bias of the individual members of the group.

The term was coined in 1952 by William H. Whyte Jr.[9] Most of the initial research on groupthink was conducted by Irving Janis, a research psychologist from Yale University.[10] Janis published an influential book in 1972, which was revised in 1982.[11][12] Janis used the Bay of Pigs disaster (the failed invasion of Castro's Cuba in 1961) and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as his two prime case studies. Later studies have evaluated and reformulated his groupthink model.[13][14]

Groupthink requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the "ingroup" produces an "illusion of invulnerability" (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the "ingroup" significantly overrates its own abilities in decision-making and significantly underrates the abilities of its opponents (the "outgroup"). Furthermore, groupthink can produce dehumanizing actions against the "outgroup". Members of a group can often feel under peer pressure to "go along with the crowd" for fear of "rocking the boat" or of how their speaking out will be perceived by the rest of the group. Group interactions tend to favor clear and harmonious agreements and it can be a cause for concern when little to no new innovations or arguments for better policies, outcomes and structures are called to question. (McLeod). Groupthink can often be referred to as a group of “yes men” because group activities and group projects in general make it extremely easy to pass on not offering constructive opinions.

Some methods that have been used to counteract group think in the past is selecting teams from more diverse backgrounds, and even mixing men and women for groups (Kamalnath). Groupthink can be considered by many to be a detriment to companies, organizations and in any work situations. Most positions that are senior level need individuals to be independent in their thinking. There is a positive correlation found between outstanding executives and decisiveness (Kelman). Groupthink also prohibits an organization from moving forward and innovating if no one ever speaks up and says something could be done differently.

Antecedent factors such as group cohesiveness, faulty group structure, and situational context (e.g., community panic) play into the likelihood of whether or not groupthink will impact the decision-making process.

From "Groupthink" by William H. Whyte Jr. in Fortune magazine, March 1952

William H. Whyte Jr. derived the term from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and popularized it in 1952 in Fortune magazine:

Groupthink being a coinage – and, admittedly, a loaded one – a working definition is in order. We are not talking about mere instinctive conformity – it is, after all, a perennial failing of mankind. What we are talking about is a rationalized conformity – an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.[9][15]

Groupthink was Whyte's diagnosis of the malaise affecting both the study and practice of management (and, by association, America) in the 1950s. Whyte was dismayed that employees had subjugated themselves to the tyranny of groups, which crushed individuality and were instinctively hostile to anything or anyone that challenged the collective view.[16]

American psychologist Irving Janis (Yale University) pioneered the initial research on the groupthink theory. He does not cite Whyte, but coined the term again by analogy with "doublethink" and similar terms that were part of the newspeak vocabulary in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. He initially defined groupthink as follows:

I use the term groupthink as a quick and easy way to refer to the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive ingroup that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. Groupthink is a term of the same order as the words in the newspeak vocabulary George Orwell used in his dismaying world of 1984. In that context, groupthink takes on an invidious connotation. Exactly such a connotation is intended, since the term refers to a deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgments as a result of group pressures.[10]^: 43

He went on to write:

The main principle of groupthink, which I offer in the spirit of Parkinson's Law, is this: "The more amiability and esprit de corps there is among the members of a policy-making ingroup, the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against outgroups".[10]^: 44

Janis set the foundation for the study of groupthink starting with his research in the American Soldier Project where he studied the effect of extreme stress on group cohesiveness. After this study he remained interested in the ways in which people make decisions under external threats. This interest led Janis to study a number of "disasters" in American foreign policy, such as failure to anticipate the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941); the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco (1961); and the prosecution of the Vietnam War (1964–67) by President Lyndon Johnson. He concluded that in each of these cases, the decisions occurred largely because of groupthink, which prevented contradictory views from being expressed and subsequently evaluated.

After the publication of Janis' book Victims of Groupthink in 1972,[11] and a revised edition with the title Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes in 1982,[12] the concept of groupthink was used to explain many other faulty decisions in history. These events included Nazi Germany's decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941, the Watergate scandal and others. Despite the popularity of the concept of groupthink, fewer than two dozen studies addressed the phenomenon itself following the publication of Victims of Groupthink, between the years 1972 and 1998.[4]^: 107 This was surprising considering how many fields of interests it spans, which include political science, communications, organizational studies, social psychology, management, strategy, counseling, and marketing. One can most likely explain this lack of follow-up in that group research is difficult to conduct, groupthink has many independent and dependent variables, and it is unclear "how to translate [groupthink's] theoretical concepts into observable and quantitative constructs".[4]^{: 107–108}

Nevertheless, outside research psychology and sociology, wider culture has come to detect groupthink in observable situations, for example:

• " [...] critics of Twitter point to the predominance of the hive mind in such social media, the kind of groupthink that submerges independent thinking in favor of conformity to the group, the collective"[17]

• "[...] leaders often have beliefs which are very far from matching reality and which can become more extreme as they are encouraged by their followers. The predilection of many cult leaders for abstract, ambiguous, and therefore unchallengeable ideas can further reduce the likelihood of reality testing, while the intense milieu control exerted by cults over their members means that most of the reality available for testing is supplied by the group environment. This is seen in the phenomenon of 'groupthink', alleged to have occurred, notoriously, during the Bay of Pigs fiasco."[18]

• "Groupthink by Compulsion [...] [G]roupthink at least implies voluntarism. When this fails, the organization is not above outright intimidation. [...] In [a nationwide telecommunications company], refusal by the new hires to cheer on command incurred consequences not unlike the indoctrination and brainwashing techniques associated with a Soviet-era gulag."[19]

To make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms indicative of groupthink:[20]

Type I: Overestimations of the group — its power and morality

• Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
• Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.

Type II: Closed-mindedness

• Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
• Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid.

Type III: Pressures toward uniformity

• Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
• Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
• Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty"
• Mindguards— self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

Irving Janis identified three antecedent conditions to groupthink:[11]^: 9

1. High group cohesiveness: Cohesiveness is the main factor that leads to groupthink. Groups that lack cohesiveness can of course make bad decisions, but they do not experience groupthink. In a cohesive group, members avoid speaking out against decisions, avoid arguing with others, and work towards maintaining friendly relationships in the group. If cohesiveness gets to such a level that there are no longer disagreements between members, then the group is ripe for groupthink.
   • Deindividuation: Group cohesiveness becomes more important than individual freedom of expression.
   • Illusions of unanimity: Members perceive falsely that everyone agrees with the group's decision; silence is seen as consent. Janis noted that the unity of group members was mere illusion. Members may disagree with the organizations' decision, but go along with the group for many reasons, such as maintaining their group status and avoiding conflict with managers or workmates. Such members think that suggesting opinions contrary to others may lead to isolation from the group.
2. Structural faults: The group is organized in ways that disrupt the communication of information, or the group carelessly makes decisions.
   • Insulation of the group: This can promote the development of unique, inaccurate perspectives on issues the group is dealing with, which can then lead to faulty solutions to the problem.
   • Lack of impartial leadership: Leaders control the group discussion, by planning what will be discussed, allowing only certain questions to be asked, and asking for opinions of only certain people in the group. Closed-style leadership is when leaders announce their opinions on the issue before the group discusses the issue together. Open-style leadership is when leaders withhold their opinion until a later time in the discussion. Groups with a closed-style leader are more biased in their judgments, especially when members had a high degree of certainty.
   • Lack of norms requiring methodological procedures.
   • Homogeneity of members' social backgrounds and ideology.
3. Situational context:
   • Highly stressful external threats: High-stake decisions can create tension and anxiety; group members may cope with this stress in irrational ways. Group members may rationalize their decision by exaggerating the positive consequences and minimizing the possible negative consequences. In attempt to minimize the stressful situation, the group decides quickly and allows little to no discussion or disagreement. Groups under high stress are more likely to make errors, lose focus of the ultimate goal, and use procedures that members know have not been effective in the past.
   • Recent failures: These can lead to low self-esteem, resulting in agreement with the group for fear of being seen as wrong.
   • Excessive difficulties in decision-making tasks.
   • Time pressures: Group members are more concerned with efficiency and quick results than with quality and accuracy. Time pressures can also lead group members to overlook important information.
   • Moral dilemmas.

Although it is possible for a situation to contain all three of these factors, all three are not always present even when groupthink is occurring. Janis considered a high degree of cohesiveness to be the most important antecedent to producing groupthink, and always present when groupthink was occurring; however, he believed high cohesiveness would not always produce groupthink. A very cohesive group abides with all group norms; but whether or not groupthink arises is dependent on what the group norms are. If the group encourages individual dissent and alternative strategies to problem solving, it is likely that groupthink will be avoided even in a highly cohesive group. This means that high cohesion will lead to groupthink only if one or both of the other antecedents is present, situational context being slightly more likely than structural faults to produce groupthink.[21]

As observed by Aldag and Fuller (1993), the groupthink phenomenon seems to rest on a set of unstated and generally restrictive assumptions:[22]

• The purpose of group problem solving is mainly to improve decision quality
• Group problem solving is considered a rational process.
• Benefits of group problem solving:
  • variety of perspectives
  • more information about possible alternatives
  • better decision reliability
  • dampening of biases
  • social presence effects
• Groupthink prevents these benefits due to structural faults and provocative situational context
• Groupthink prevention methods will produce better decisions
• An illusion of well-being is presumed to be inherently dysfunctional.
• Group pressures towards consensus lead to concurrence-seeking tendencies.

It has been thought that groups with the strong ability to work together will be able to solve dilemmas in a quicker and more efficient fashion than an individual. Groups have a greater amount of resources which lead them to be able to store and retrieve information more readily and come up with more alternative solutions to a problem. There was a recognized downside to group problem solving in that it takes groups more time to come to a decision and requires that people make compromises with each other. However, it was not until the research of Janis appeared that anyone really considered that a highly cohesive group could impair the group's ability to generate quality decisions. Tight-knit groups may appear to make decisions better because they can come to a consensus quickly and at a low energy cost; however, over time this process of decision-making may decrease the members' ability to think critically. It is, therefore, considered by many to be important to combat the effects of groupthink.[21]

According to Janis, decision-making groups are not necessarily destined to groupthink. He devised ways of preventing groupthink:[11]^{: 209–215}

• Leaders should assign each member the role of "critical evaluator". This allows each member to freely air objections and doubts.
• Leaders should not express an opinion when assigning a task to a group.
• Leaders should absent themselves from many of the group meetings to avoid excessively influencing the outcome.
• The organization should set up several independent groups, working on the same problem.
• All effective alternatives should be examined.
• Each member should discuss the group's ideas with trusted people outside of the group.
• The group should invite outside experts into meetings. Group members should be allowed to discuss with and question the outside experts.
• At least one group member should be assigned the role of devil's advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.

The devil's advocate in a group may provide questions and insight which contradict the majority group in order to avoid groupthink decisions.[23] A study by Ryan Hartwig confirms that the devil's advocacy technique is very useful for group problem-solving.[24] It allows for conflict to be used in a way that is most-effective for finding the best solution so that members will not have to go back and find a different solution if the first one fails. Hartwig also suggests that the devil's advocacy technique be incorporated with other group decision-making models such as the functional theory to find and evaluate alternative solutions. The main idea of the devil's advocacy technique is that somewhat structured conflict can be facilitated to not only reduce groupthink, but to also solve problems.

A similar term to groupthink is the Abilene paradox, another phenomenon that is detrimental when working in groups. When organizations fall into the Abilene paradox, they take actions in contradiction to what their perceived goals may be and therefore defeat the very purposes they are trying to achieve.[25] Failure to communicate desires or beliefs can cause the Abilene paradox.

The Watergate scandal is an example of this. Before the scandal had occurred, a meeting took place where they discussed the issue. One of Nixon's campaign aides was unsure if he should speak up and give his input. If he had voiced his disagreement with the group's decision, it is possible that the scandal could have been avoided.

Other examples of how groupthink could be avoided or prevented:

After the Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco, President John F. Kennedy sought to avoid groupthink during the Cuban Missile Crisis using "vigilant appraisal".[12]^{: 148–153} During meetings, he invited outside experts to share their viewpoints, and allowed group members to question them carefully. He also encouraged group members to discuss possible solutions with trusted members within their separate departments, and he even divided the group up into various sub-groups, to partially break the group cohesion. Kennedy was deliberately absent from the meetings, so as to avoid pressing his own opinion.

Cass Sunstein reports that introverts can sometimes be silent in meetings with extroverts; he recommends explicitly asking for each person's opinion, either during the meeting or afterwards in one-on-one sessions. Sunstein points to studies showing groups with a high level of internal socialization and happy talk are more prone to bad investment decisions due to groupthink, compared with groups of investors who are relative strangers and more willing to be argumentative. To avoid group polarization, where discussion with like-minded people drives an outcome further to an extreme than any of the individuals favored before the discussion, he recommends creating heterogeneous groups which contain people with different points of view. Sunstein also points out that people arguing a side they do not sincerely believe (in the role of devil's advocate) tend to be much less effective than a sincere argument. This can be accomplished by dissenting individuals, or a group like a Red Team that is expected to pursue an alternative strategy or goal "for real".[26]

Testing groupthink in a laboratory is difficult because synthetic settings remove groups from real social situations, which ultimately changes the variables conducive or inhibitive to groupthink.[27] Because of its subjective nature, researchers have struggled to measure groupthink as a complete phenomenon, instead frequently opting to measure its particular factors. These factors range from causal to effectual and focus on group and situational aspects.[28][29]

Park (1990) found that "only 16 empirical studies have been published on groupthink", and concluded that they "resulted in only partial support of his [Janis's] hypotheses".[30]^: 230 Park concludes, "despite Janis' claim that group cohesiveness is the major necessary antecedent factor, no research has shown a significant main effect of cohesiveness on groupthink."[30]^: 230 Park also concludes that research on the interaction between group cohesiveness and leadership style does not support Janis' claim that cohesion and leadership style interact to produce groupthink symptoms.[30] Park presents a summary of the results of the studies analyzed. According to Park, a study by Huseman and Drive (1979) indicates groupthink occurs in both small and large decision-making groups within businesses.[30] This results partly from group isolation within the business. Manz and Sims (1982) conducted a study showing that autonomous work groups are susceptible to groupthink symptoms in the same manner as decisions making groups within businesses.[30][31] Fodor and Smith (1982) produced a study revealing that group leaders with high power motivation create atmospheres more susceptible to groupthink.[30][32] Leaders with high power motivation possess characteristics similar to leaders with a "closed" leadership style—an unwillingness to respect dissenting opinion. The same study indicates that level of group cohesiveness is insignificant in predicting groupthink occurrence. Park summarizes a study performed by Callaway, Marriott, and Esser (1985) in which groups with highly dominant members "made higher quality decisions, exhibited lowered state of anxiety, took more time to reach a decision, and made more statements of disagreement/agreement".[30]^: 232[33] Overall, groups with highly dominant members expressed characteristics inhibitory to groupthink. If highly dominant members are considered equivalent to leaders with high power motivation, the results of Callaway, Marriott, and Esser contradict the results of Fodor and Smith. A study by Leana (1985) indicates the interaction between level of group cohesion and leadership style is completely insignificant in predicting groupthink.[30][34] This finding refutes Janis' claim that the factors of cohesion and leadership style interact to produce groupthink. Park summarizes a study by McCauley (1989) in which structural conditions of the group were found to predict groupthink while situational conditions did not.[14][30] The structural conditions included group insulation, group homogeneity, and promotional leadership. The situational conditions included group cohesion. These findings refute Janis' claim about group cohesiveness predicting groupthink.

Overall, studies on groupthink have largely focused on the factors (antecedents) that predict groupthink. Groupthink occurrence is often measured by number of ideas/solutions generated within a group, but there is no uniform, concrete standard by which researchers can objectively conclude groupthink occurs.[27] The studies of groupthink and groupthink antecedents reveal a mixed body of results. Some studies indicate group cohesion and leadership style to be powerfully predictive of groupthink, while other studies indicate the insignificance of these factors. Group homogeneity and group insulation are generally supported as factors predictive of groupthink.

Diversity

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