Submitted by: Submitted by salah11
Views: 10
Words: 1028
Pages: 5
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 01/04/2016 02:31 PM
Groupthink
By
Paul ‘t Hart
Draft entry for K.M. Dowding (ed), Sage Encyclopedia of Power, London: Sage
2008
This Orwellian-sounding term was adopted in 1971 by Yale psychologist Irving L.
Janis to refer to a pathological form of group decision making which he alleged was a
root cause behind several fiascoes in U.S. foreign policy. Groupthink has since been
invoked as an explanation of all sorts of governmental, corporate, journalistic and
professional mishaps and disasters. On the strength of a highly evocative key concept
and a series of compellingly written case studies offering a persuasive interpretation
of a string of traumatic policy disasters deeply carved into the public imagination,
Janis’s 1972 book Victims of Groupthink went on to become one of the most
influential psychological contributions to the study of decision making politics,
management and the professions ever. Janis challenged the then dominant view in
theoretical and applied social psychology that group cohesion always results in better
performance. He maintained that under certain conditions and when a group engages
in stressful decisional tasks, strong group cohesion can in fact contribute to defective
decision making which, in turn, may lead to a policy disaster. He defined groupthink
as a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a
cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their
motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. He also stated that
groupthink refers to a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral
judgment that results from in-group pressures.
Janis identified eight main symptoms of the groupthink `syndrome:’ an illusion of
invulnerability among group members; the use of rationalizations to discount
warnings and other negative feedback; a shared belief in the inherent morality of the
group; stereotyped views of members of opposing groups;...