Diversity and Groupthink: a Reflective Essay

Groupthink and Diversity:

A Simple Solution to Reduce Group Cohesiveness

Major events in United States history include the bombing of troops at Pearl Harbor during World War II, the United States attack on Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the disastrous Vietnam War, and the recent War on Terror which was originally designed to eradicate the threat of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein (Porteus, 2004). What do these events have in common other than bloodshed? According to a theory by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), the answer is flawed thinking and impaired foresight of as a result of groupthink. When people come together to form a group, discussions in the group setting often lead to conflict and as a result there is an inundation of material on the web and in print designed to help groups reduce conflict and learn to work together cohesively. However, what if the desired conflict-reducing results actually sabotage a group’s best intentions and lead to a form of potentially deadly thinking? The results of groupthink can be catastrophic, especially when the group making the error in thought is a group responsible for national security. While there are several methods that can help to reduce groupthink, it seems that the most vital means to reducing groupthink is including a diverse representation of the population within the group. This essay will exam groupthink and why it is detrimental to group decision making, potential “cures” for groupthink including the addition of diversity to the group, and finally, how diversity directly impacts the thinking of a group and minimizes group cohesiveness, and therefore, groupthink.

First, this essay will take a deeper look at groupthink and a few of the potential consequences that make groupthink detrimental to a group’s decision making. Karl Albrecht, in his book Practical Intelligence: the Art and Science of Common Sense, discusses how “Professor Janis proposed the term “groupthink” to describe...