SCSCAI leadership, Causes & Effects

Groupthink

Thursday, April 22, 2010

10:22 AM

Symptoms of groupthink
To make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms indicative of groupthink (1977).
Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
1. Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
2. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
3. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
4. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".
5. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
6. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
7. Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.
Groupthink, resulting from the symptoms listed above, results in defective decision making. That is, consensus-driven decisions are the result of the following practices of groupthinking[5]
8. Incomplete survey of alternatives
9. Incomplete survey of objectives
10. Failure to examine risks of preferred choice
11. Failure to reevaluate previously rejected alternatives
12. Poor information search
13. Selection bias in collecting information
14. Failure to work out contingency plans.
Janis argued that groupthink was responsible for the Bay of Pigs 'fiasco' and other major examples of faulty decision-making. The UK bank Northern Rock, before its nationalisation, is thought to be a recent major example of groupthink.[5] In such real-world examples, a number of the above groupthink symptoms were displayed.
Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink>
Preventing groupthink
According to Irving Janis, decision making groups are not necessarily destined to groupthink. He devised seven ways of preventing groupthink (209-15):
8. Leaders should assign each member the role of “critical evaluator”. This allows each member to freely air objections and doubts.
9. Higher-ups should not express an opinion when assigning a task to a group.
10. The organization should set up several independent groups, working on the same problem.
11. All effective alternatives should be examined.
12. Each member should discuss the group's ideas with trusted people outside of the group.
13. The group should invite outside experts into meetings. Group members should be allowed to discuss with and question the outside experts.
14. At least one group member should be assigned the role of Devil's advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.
By following these guidelines, groupthink can be avoided. After the Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco, John F. Kennedy sought to avoid groupthink during the Cuban Missile Crisis.[6] 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. JFK was deliberately absent from the meetings, so as to avoid pressing his own opinion. Ultimately, the Cuban missile crisis was resolved peacefully, thanks in part to these measures.
Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink>

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