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Groupthink Research Paper

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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). I am a member of a group called YPI. This stands for Youth Philanthropy Initiative of Mount Vernon and Knox County. We are a division of the Community Foundation that is run mainly by student representatives from local high schools in the area. Every year we distribute a needs survey through our high schools to see what our peers view as their biggest needs. With this information in mind, we write letters to local donors and ask for donations that. These donations are used to award as grants to projects and programs in our area that will help address the needs of today’s youth that we identify through our needs survey. Some projects that recently have been awarded grants were an after …show more content…

Last year, after we had received all of the grant applications, we began deciding how to divide up the funds we had been given that year.Everybody in the group got along amazing and nobody wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings. When someone brought up an idea about how we should allocate a portion of the funds, everyone else would just kind of nod in agreement. The problem was that I realized that not everyone was agreeing to these ideas. One member suggested that we fully fund a $1,000 project to put on a family movie night in Ariel Foundation Park. A lot of other members truly did agree, but I could see that several others did not and they did not want to speak up. I thought about trying to get them to speak up, but I too had fallen victim to groupthink. Speaking out, I thought, would destroy the supportive atmosphere that had developed in the room. Hurting someone else’s feelings was the last thing I wanted to

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