Readings on Group Think
Preface
One of the best known views of what Lessing calls "Group Minds" is "Groupthink," a term created by social psychologist, Irving L. Janis. Below are links to some brief excerpts from the book by Janis as well as a fuller discussion of the concept by Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Readings
Irving L. Janis: Excerpts from the book Victims of Groupthink
PSR Website: "What Is Groupthink?" (includes annotated bibliography)
More Visual Presentations of some of this material:
Flash Player Slideshow from PSR: "Groupthink Virus Vaccination"
Power Point Presentation from PSR: "What Is Groupthink?"
When you've finished reading, print out the first two articles above & bring them to class. In addition, write down your answers to the following 3 questions & come to class ready to share your answers in small groups.
Group Think Questions
1. Irving Janis lists 8 “symptoms of groupthink.” Choose an example of a bad decision caused by “groupthink” and describe how several of those symptoms apply to that example.You may choose an example from your own experience – a bad decision made by you or someone else or the whole group in a family crisis, school group, church group, or cultural group. Or choose a bad business decision made by a group that you know about. Or choose an example from current events in our society - e.g. the Bush administration’s domestic response to the 9-11 tragedy (i.e. Patriot Act & unjustified pre-emptive arrests) or the Bush adminstration’s decision to invade Iraq. Or choose from less recent policy decisions (e.g. the decision to escalate the vietnam War, the bungled Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, or the Challenger shuttle disaster - all of which Janis and others have analyzed as examples of bad decisions caused by “groupthink”).Tell us what faulty decision is your example. Then name one of the 8 symptoms and explain how it applies. Then do the same for at least 2 other symptoms.
2. In Doris Lessing’s “Group Minds” she argues that we now have “a great deal of hard information about ourselves” – information about how human group mechanisms affect our attitudes, judgements, and decisions – “but we do not use [this information] to improve our institutions and therefore our lives” (159). Do you think the “remedies” to “groupthink” provided by the Psychologists for Social Responsibility site provide good examples of how we might use this information? Explain why or how (or why not).
3. The Psychologists for Social Responsibility site suggests that many of the “following consequences of groupthink apply to the Bush administration’s handling of the ‘war on terrorism’ and the issues related to Iraq and Saddam Hussein:
a) incomplete survey of alternativesDo you agree? If so, for at least 2 or 3 of these consequences, describe how it applies. If not, explain why you disagree.
b) incomplete survey of objectives
c) failure to examine risks of preferred choice
d) failure to reappraise initially rejected alternatives
e) poor information search
f) selective bias in processing information at hand
g) failure to work out contingency plans
h) low probability of successful outcome.”
Feel free to also jot down any questions &comments you want to raise in our class discussion. In any case, always mark particular passages you may want to refer to in class so that you don't have to waste everyone's time searching for a passage you want to refer us to.
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