Groupthink Experience Paper

I believe our group work is going well. We haven’t had many meetings concerning bringing all the work together, but people have been working had individually as noted in the annotated bibliography. One complaint is that in the agreement we said that the annotated bibliography would be completed by the Sunday before the due date, when in actuality two members did not add their work to the group until the day the assignment was due. However, this is minor in the larger scheme since it was completed and submitted on time. We have made plans to come together next week to work on the project together and how and where everyone’s contribution will be placed. Overall I don’t have much to complain about as communication and work ethic are good. I

     What is groupthink? There is a simple definition for it, but is it truly that simple? The term groupthink refers to the inclination of group members to have the same opinions and beliefs; it frequently leads to mistakes. It often occurs without an individual being aware of it. Conflict is considered to be a harmful element when related to groups, but conflict is good when considering groupthink because it helps to eliminate the existence of a groupthink. The explanation sounds simple enough, but it is more complex than the description given.

Groupthink was created by Irving Janis in 1972. (Shore, 2010, p.3) He created this method to prevent teams from making bad decisions. Irving Janis went to Yale and began his research on groupthink there. At Yale, he researched why a team could make such an excellent decision one time and a horrible one the next time. (Shore, 2010, p.3) Since groupthink was created, it has been used in many instances without even knowing about it. Such as, the Cuban missile crisis, France’s defeat in the 1940 campaign, and the Challenger space shuttle incident.

Stephen King was quoted as saying, “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” A plane crash is bad enough; throw into the mix that the plane crash landed in a vast desert far away from anyone and anything. The team showed great cohesiveness in its ability to get through the groupthink and group shift behaviors. In this paper, groupthink and group shift behaviors will be discussed. This paper will cover points to show how through both behaviors the group will remain cohesive and put aside any individual needs and focus more on the needs of the group. Even though the situation will be tough, the team will plan, find harmony and put their brains together to find ways to survive.

On October 15, 1962, the United States viewed reconnaissance photographs of Cuba and discovered Soviet missiles which were under construction. The next day President John F. Kennedy was informed of the discovery and the President formed a group of twelve advisors to plan and handle the crisis. The advisors met for seven days to plan a strategy on how to handle the crisis and on October 22, 1962, President Kennedy revealed the crisis to the American public and of his decision to surround and blockade Cuba. President Kennedy also made the announcement that the Soviets would need to remove their missiles from Cuba and any missiles fired from Cuba would be considered a direct threat to and attack on the United States.

To add on to what Rachel said, groupthink can also occur if the leader is well respected or persuasive. It does have it pros and cons. If used properly the group can come to a solution with everyone contributing. It gives everyone of a sense if worth because they contributed. A con can be peer pressure as when everyone agrees on one solution. This leads mental inefficiency and decrease in moral judgement. As some patients may just go with everyone says in order to avoid conflict. If you want to avoid groupthink then you can have an outsider come in and question the views of the members or or assign the role of critical evaluator to each member of the group.

Have you ever wondered what got the Beatles or ACDC so far in their career? They were in a group and that benefited them in multiple ways just like group projects benefit us in the classroom. I think that having group projects benefits us and our whole entire learning atmosphere in a positive way. Group project and activities benefit us by giving a more positive and less tense environment for learning, they help us learn social skills when we work together with other people in our groups and finally group projects let us take enjoyment in what we are doing our project on and we can have a better experience while participating in this project. I like group projects and I think we should have more of them in and out of the classroom.

During this group session, the patients were asked to identify common relapse triggers and verbalize ways in which they can avoid their triggers. The patients were provided with a handout on triggers and educated on alternative methods to avoid their triggers.The patient was oriented x 3. The patient reported that feelings of depression and being bored has caused him in the past to relapse. He shared that he is ready to be clean and is aware of his triggers. He further shared that he goals are to engage in outside activities that can help occupy his timeThe patient was oriented x 3. He actively participated in the group discussion. The patient identified his triggers as his relationship with his family members. Throughout the session, the patient

Groupthink: Groupthink is a way that groups may try to keep levels of conflict low. The problem is that all members pretend that they agree with a decision, which discourages creativity. Without counter arguments being presented, the group is susceptible to bad or even irrational decisions (Beebe p. 191).

Groupthink is a phenomenon throughout history that has led to disastrous results. The Oxford Dictionary defines groupthink as “The practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility:” In this paper, I will illustrate three examples in history that highlight the negative effects of groupthink. William H. Whyte originally came up with groupthink terminology and then in the 1970’s Irving Janis followed up with more research on the subject. Janis identified three groupthink warnings. They are directive leadership, group homogeneity, and group isolation.

As people, when confronted with a problem where a solution must be found, our ideal situation is to come up with the best possible one. To do this, we ideally gather the most knowledgeable, intelligent individuals into a group and attempt to derive the best solution to the problem. With the collection of these people, one would think that finding the best possible answer to the problem would be a rather simple task. However, what has happened in many situations is the complete opposite. Rather than finding the best possible solutions, many ideal, cohesive groups arrive at the worst possible answer largely due to problems in communication within the group. This is what we call the radical theory of

How did my group come to what we have now? It was an interesting journey that we had to go through. A journey of a lot of words, ribbing, and creative thinking. At first when the group project of announced, I freaked out. I did not know what was going to happen…if I had a group to be in, if there were enough people to be in my group, or if I had to do all of the work myself. The first meeting of the Climate Project I was in this group called “The Clean-up Crew”. We only had two people in the group…including myself, so it was not looking too bright for the group to survive. We had talked about potential cleaning inventions, and what needed to happen for the pollution to stop going into the ocean. However, the group had to be disbanded because my one group member did not show up to class, so I had to join another group who were hurting for members. The group I joined next was the group I ended up with the whole semester…the “Education” group.

Insight is the third stage in the group process. In this stage the members of therapy develop new ways of thinking about of their situation. The leader encourages insight in different ways. The leader can model curiosity and risk taking behaviour, affirm the group member’s insight, use self-reflection exercises, provide education, show empathy, and create a sharing environment. An example of insight displayed in the parental group when they read their personal narratives of their self and their experience of handling a child with disability. Through group sharing of the personal narratives members learned new words such as “joy” that reminded them how happy their lives are. The also discovered that thoughts of anger is actually closer

Group projects are horrible and just give the opportunity for laziness. I have never, ever liked group projects. Group projects are the worst in my school experience because some people want to do all of the work, some members do not contribute to the project, and some students lack the courage to talk to anyone. Therefore, I have never enjoyed group projects as well as many others.

When we first got together as a class I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this class because one I hate being in a group with random people I don’t know and two I do not like public speaking with random people. So at first I was judging this class based on my fears of being in groups with strangers, then once we got paired with our groups and I was with Tyler that made me more comfortable with talking to the group and getting to know everyone. Besides Tyler who I play football with we were grouped up with two other athletic people. First was Alex who is a member of our Girls Lacrosse team here at West Chester and is also a Junior. Next is Hannah who is also a Junior and played a ton of high school sports and her brother plays football at PennState so this adds to her athletic features in her family. So once learning we all love sorts we had to narrow it down to what we would like to observe together. We came down to the football team and the Athletic Training Program here on campus which helps our student athletes with injuries. As a group we thought that ultimately we would get a better perspective with a group other than football so we went with the AT program. This is where we came up with the name for our group which was Training Rams and if your wondering who came up with it, you guessed it Tyler Higgins. So this brings us to how we would be able to function as a group since we were all seemingly quite people.