Truth 46. Beware of Groupthink

If you’re like me, you’ve occasionally felt like speaking up in a meeting or group setting but decided against it. Why didn’t we speak up? If what we wanted to say didn’t fit in with the dominant views of the group, we may have been victims of groupthink. This is a phenomenon that occurs when group members become so focused on achieving agreement that the search for consensus overrides any realistic assessment of deviant or unpopular views. It represents a deterioration in an individual’s mental efficiency and reality testing as a result of group pressures.

We have all seen the symptoms of the groupthink phenomenon:

1. Group members rationalize any resistance to the assumptions that the group has made. No matter how strongly the evidence may contradict their basic assumptions, members behave so as to reinforce those assumptions continually.

2. Members apply direct pressure on those who momentarily express doubts about any of the group’s shared views or who question the validity of arguments supporting the alternative favored by the majority.

3. Those members who have doubts or hold differing points of view seek to avoid deviating from what appears to be group consensus by keeping silent about misgivings and even minimizing to themselves the importance of their doubts.

4. There appears to be an illusion of unanimity. If someone doesn’t speak, it’s assumed that he or she sides with the majority view. In other words, abstention becomes viewed as a “Yes” vote.

In studies of historic American foreign policy decisions, groupthink symptoms were found to prevail when government policy-making groups failed: unpreparedness at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. invasion of North Korea, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the escalation of the Vietnam War. The Challenger space shuttle disaster and the failure of the main mirror on the Hubble telescope have been linked to decision processes at NASA in which groupthink symptoms were evident. More recently, a U.S. Senate committee concluded that groupthink caused the CIA to interpret ambiguous data as conclusive evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Does groupthink attack all groups? No. It seems to occur most often where there is a clear group identity, where members hold a positive image of their group that they want to protect, and where the group perceives a collective threat to this positive image. So groupthink is not a dissenter-suppression mechanism as much as it’s a means for a group to protect its positive image. For instance, in the cases of the Challenger and Hubble fiascos, it was NASA’s attempt to confirm its identity as “the elite organization that could do no wrong.”

As a manager, what can you do to minimize groupthink? One thing you can do is play an impartial role when you’re a group leader. You should actively seek input from all members and avoid expressing your own opinions, especially in the early stages of deliberation. Another thing is to appoint one group member to play the role of devil’s advocate. This member’s role is to openly challenge the majority position and offer divergent perspectives. Still another suggestion is to utilize exercises that stimulate active discussion of diverse alternatives without threatening the group and intensifying identity protection. One such exercise is to have group members talk about dangers or risks involved in a decision and delaying discussion of any potential gains. By requiring members to first focus on the negatives of a decision alternative, the group is less likely to stifle dissenting views and more likely to gain an objective evaluation.