Groupthink Essay

Groupthink is more likely to occur in a provocative situation with high amounts of external stress. In these situations, groupthink is especially likely when the members of the group have little hope for better solutions than those proposed by the leader. The attractiveness of the Branch Davidians' alternative to Koresh--surrendering to the FBI--was greatly undermined by the government's treatment of the adults and children who did surrender.[124]

It was interesting to read about groupthink (pg. 213) because I’ve seen many cases in which individuals conform to an answer for the sake of keeping “the peace,” instead of pushing for accurate analysis and critical evaluation. Anyhow, signs of Closed-Mindedness, particularly – Stereotypes of outside groups - is the most ethical danger sign to my work team. However, it is more accurate to say that it is a combination between collective rationalization and stereotypes of outside groups.

Groupthink is when the members of the group is greatly influenced by other members. This leads to risky shift, because if one of the members is doing violent acts, others may feel the pressure to do it as well. Even if they are not forced, they feel this want of being part of something that pushes them to do those violent acts. Just like the Asch conformity experiment found, people follow others in the group for fear of being ridiculed or different. In the case of the Kent State, those engaged in the riots, were influenced greatly by their own peers to destroy property. In some sense, they did not want to engage in violence, but it was present in those desiring a change. There seems to be no other option, but except to conform and engage in the actions everyone was doing. Personal morality and individuality was forgotten. The open crowd shooting by the guardsmen, who were attempting to control the situation, is another example of groupthink and risky shift. It can be assumed, that these guardsmen had no intention in killing anyone. But there was a higher authority who asked them to control the situation one way or another. Whoever started the shooting, in the group of guardsmen, caused the others to shoot as

The fourth symptom of groupthink is a stereotyped view of out-groups. The fifth symptom of groupthink is direct pressure on dissenters, where the group exerts pressure on people who disagree with the group’s decisions. Self-censorship is the sixth symptom of groupthink. Self-censorship is when deviations from the group consensus are not expressed. The seventh symptom of groupthink is an illusion of unanimity, where the majority views are assumed to be unanimous.

By definition groupthink occurs when a group members’ avoid dissent in order to achieve a consensus within a group. I showed this concept by having a group setting with a distinct leader (the person wearing the crown, and standing on a podium), and then having three other members of the group. The leader is asking if the group members in the group agree with his idea, and the word “My” is bold because I wanted to show that the leader was overstating or letting the group know what his opinion was on the topic. While all of the group member seem to agree with the leaders idea if you take a closer look you can see that one the group members “I do” is a flap, and underneath his true opinion on the topic is revealed. But in order to form a consensus

Loyalty and unity are traits that most members of society seek in our lives, both personally and professionally. In order to attract these traits, we tend to demonstrate that same loyalty and unity. At times, loyalty and sense of unity come at a price that we may not realize we are paying. Groupthink is a phenomenon discovered by Irving Janis that demonstrates this high price. Groupthink is a concept that describes a group whereas "loyalty requires each member to avoid raising controversial issues" (Janis, 1982, p 12). Groupthink occurs in all levels of competent and intelligent groups and has been around long before Irving Janis coined the term.

Antecedents: The group is highly cohesive, group isolation, a directive leader, high stress, poor decision-making procedures. Symptoms: Illusion of invulnerability, belief in the moral correctness of the group, stereotyped views of out-group, self-censorship, direct pressure on dissenters to conform, illusion of unanimity (not calling on people known to disagree), mindguards (group members protect the leader from contrary viewpoints). Consequences: Defective decision making - incomplete survey of alternatives, failure to examine risks of the favored alternative, poor information search, failure to develop contingency plans.

Groupthink is a problem that happens when individuals within a group go with the status quo in order to maintain harmony between the members. The outcome of groupthink results in poor-decision making by the group as a whole in order for members to avoid confrontation. Therefore, decisions are made by group members without other options being critically evaluated in order to reduce conflict and reach an agreement. Since individuals want to avoid raising issues that are controversial or find alternative solutions, there is a loss of independent thinking, individuality, and creativeness that happens when members fall victim to groupthink. The unintended consequence of groupthink leads to dysfunction within the groups dynamics because members believe

Groupthink is defined as a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-groups when members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013) Basically, it's when a group makes decisions that, more or less, discourages creativity or individual responsibility. I remember a time when I was in a business meeting, as an administrative assistant, taking notes, and at the time I didn’t know that what I was sitting in was a groupthink, but as I look back I can see the symptoms of one. There was a unanimous amount of peer-pressure to coax individuals into agreeing to a decision or idea that was presented. There was also the

Groupthink, a term created by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), takes place when a cluster settles on broken choices since crowd persuasion leads to a breakdown of "mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment". Clusters influenced by groupthink overlook choices and tend to take ridiculous movements that deprive our positive human qualities from separate crowds. A group is particularly defenseless against groupthink when its individuals are comparable in experience, when the cluster is protected from outside conclusions, and when there are no reasonable principles for basic leadership.

Groupthink occurs when team members place consensus above all other priorities—including using good judgment–when the consensus reflects poor judgment or improper or immoral actions.

This issue can delay group decisions, and they become less effective. In an individual approach, timing is not a problem. A single leader is responsible for the decision without depend in anybody else. In some cases the group have a strong personality leader who dominates the group, for some members of the group, this can create discomfort and stress in the environment which groupthink may occur. Another major disadvantages for group approach could be diffusion of responsibilities, since everyone on the group is responsible for the decision making, a wrong decision can create a lack of accountability, and blame some else for wrong decisions.

Mullen (1994) guided an extensive literature search for their meta-analytic assessment of groupthink-cohesion examination and revealed only nine objective pragmatic studies studying Janis’s central projection concerning the negative correlation between decision quality and group cohesion. Similarly, Esser created a more wide-ranging assessment that acknowledged eleven laboratory groupthink studies and about seventeen historically constructed reports. (1998) Succinctly, as numerous researchers have made known we have far more pragmatic tests of this interpretation than one would anticipate given its pervasive influence. (Aldag & Fuller, 1993; Esser, 1998)

The information following will be divided into six sections, each dedicated to a different part of groupthink. The reason is to clearly show the different causes and effect of groupthink in

In groupthink, people will begin to forget about their own beliefs and go with what the group is discussing to avoid conflict. How do we know that the third party will not create a groupthink environment? Tannen suggest “(…) we not give up conflict