What is the psychological term for the tendency of group members to shift as a result of group discussion toward more extreme positions than those they initially held?

5 Implications and Suggestions for Future Research and Theory

Groupthink has stimulated research on group dysfunctions, provided links to other literatures such as stress and vigilance, emphasized potentially important variables in group decision making, and encouraged policymakers to take remedies for excessive concurrence seeking seriously. Indeed, Janis’s recommendations for “remedies” for groupthink are themselves an excellent compilation of approaches to help preclude group dysfunction.

However, group problem solving is a complex and challenging phenomenon. Although the groupthink model has played an important role in generating interest in group problem-solving processes and in acting as a catalyst for associated theory and research, it has not incorporated three decades of theory and research, has received limited empirical support, and is restrictive in scope. Recent theory and research, as well as critical evaluation of the model, suggest that more comprehensive models are necessary to guide researchers and practitioners in dealing with the group decision phenomenon.

It is not unusual for theories to generate initial widespread interest and enthusiasm and then to meet with subsequent revision, rejection, or reaffirmation. However, groupthink has generally resisted dispassionate reevaluation. This is perhaps due in large part to the raw intuitive appeal of the phenomenon as well as to the fact that studies of groupthink have often been searches for confirmation. Rigorous evaluation of the phenomenon is further rendered difficult by the fact that a variety of views of groupthink have emerged, as have contrasting positions on what level of evidence is needed to indicate support.

Similarly, popular acceptance of groupthink has been extraordinary. Perhaps this is understandable: Groupthink has served as a vivid bogeyman that can be readily summoned to illustrate the dangers of overemphasis on concurrence seeking, and it continues to serve its purpose. This article has provided a variety of potential reasons for this enthusiastic acceptance and has shown that they are consistent in yielding illusory support.

Although attention to groupthink has yielded some clear benefits over the past three decades or so, there is growing consensus that the phenomenon lacks conceptual and empirical support, is restrictive in scope, and is inappropriately deterministic. As such, future research should seek to build on decades of groupthink and other research and theory on group processes and outcomes to yield more encompassing, less causally constrained perspectives. New theories and models should generalize to a broad range of group types and situations (e.g., including self-managing groups and virtual groups), incorporate additional relevant variables (e.g., leader motivations, stage of group development, power relationships), and recognize that groups, as well as group leaders, may have multiple goals (e.g., sustained motivation of the group leader, continued use of group processes, prevention of defection of group members). Finally, the research should avoid selection on the dependent variable; instead, it should consider instances of both favorable and poor group outcomes and should seek to be theory building rather than theory confirming. In this way, the energy, enthusiasm, and intellectual and other resources that have been directed toward the groupthink phenomenon for more than three decades may yield broader, more inclusive, and more valid models and theories of group decision processes.

Groupthink

Groupthink describes a particular group dynamics leading to a decision-making pathology. Occurring under widely observed conditions, groupthink can lead to a degradation of decision making whereby group members sacrifice their independence in favor of herding behavior.10 A minority, often of one, becomes the decision maker often with impetuosity and unwarranted rectitude. A variety of groupthink symptoms could lead to overestimation of the group’s power and morality, pressures toward uniformity of viewpoint and closed-mindedness. The conditions that give rise to groupthink include cohesiveness, isolation, lack of diversity, partiality of leadership, absence of procedural protocols, stress, recent failures, and moral dilemmas.

Groupthink has special relevance for tail risk because ERM ultimately devolves to boards of directors which are vulnerable to the preconditions of groupthink. Corporate boards often make a virtue of collegiality that can be readily conflated with cohesiveness. Similarly, boards are rarely paragons of diversity and their insulation from shareholders and other stakeholders has been widely chronicled in the proxy access literature as well as legislative and regulatory deliberations. Board decisions are often taken under stressful conditions and moral dilemmas are not uncommon. Decisions from the Enron board room prior to its collapses would have served well in illustrating the pathologies of group decision-making. Groupthink and its symptomatic optimism relate directly to tail risk assessments. According to this frame of thought, the probability of calamitous events is routinely underestimated by groups like public company boards or partners’ committees.

Groupthink

Groupthink describes the phenomenon by which existing information that is relevant to a certain decision is not processed by group members in a rational and systematic way. Instead, information processing is biased in the direction of a preferred decision alternative within the group. This bias increases the risk of faulty decisions. Analyzing historical political disasters following group decisions, such as the American invasion of Cuba, Janis (1982) specified symptoms of groupthink: (1) Illusions of invulnerability; that is, high conformity of group members’ views and thinking styles makes them overconfident. (2) Willingness to take high risks leads group members to not take negative feedback seriously; that is, group members avoid questioning their own basic beliefs when facing a challenging decision. (3) Stereotyping of members with a different opinion by labeling them as incompetent. (4) Pressure toward conformity exerted by the formal leader or the majority of the group; that is, subsequent self-censorship processes make group members (falsely) assume that silence means approval. The risk of groupthink is amplified when groups are homogeneous (see Diversity in Groups), when group structures are markedly hierarchical, and when a strong commitment to particular decision alternatives exists before group discussion begins. Considerable empirical evidence deals with prevention and intervention strategies to counteract groupthink (for an overview see Frey et al., 1996). For example, effects of groupthink are reduced if (1) the group leader acts as an impartial coordinator, (2) self-confident minority members are encouraged to speak up, (3) opinions of external experts are integrated into the group decision, (4) artificial conflict is implemented in the group decision process (e.g., devil’s advocacy or dialectical inquiry techniques), (5) each group member is held individually responsible for the decision process and its outcome, and (6) different subgroups are created to separately engage in decision making. Symptoms and consequences of groupthink are observable in many applied contexts, such as work in project teams or decision making on organizational boards. Therefore, the concept of groupthink has been frequently applied to explain corporate or political failure (e.g., accounting fraud; Scharff, 2005).

Groupthink: Eliminating the Creative Process

Research on creativity in groups is a relatively recent phenomenon. Groups were mostly associated with the phenomenon known as groupthink, which is in fact quite antithetical to creativity. An awareness of the phenomenon and its characteristics is important in order to remain alert to how groups can actively block creativity.

Groupthink involves a number of factors. They include:

the unwillingness to examine anything but a few alternative courses of action, often only two, without a survey of the full alternatives;

failure to examine the course of action initially preferred by the majority of the members from the standpoint of non-obvious risks and drawbacks that had not been evaluated originally;

neglect of courses of action initially evaluated as unsatisfactory by the majority;

little or no time is spent discussing whether nonobvious gains have been overlooked or whether the ways of reducing seemingly prohibitive costs which make alternatives undesirable;

few if any attempts to obtain information from experts who can supply sound estimates of losses and gains to be expected from alternative courses of action;

selective bias is shown in the way the group reacts to factual information and relevant judgments from experts, the media, and outside critics;

members take interest in facts that support their initially preferred policy, and take up time in their meetings to discuss them, but they ignore facts and opinions which do not support their policy; and

members spend little time deliberating about how the chosen policy might be hindered by bureaucratic inertia, sabotaged by political opponents, or temporarily derailed by the common accidents that befall the best of plans.

Groups that become victims to groupthink have already made up their minds and are unwilling to listen to any other views. There is a pressure to conform, and go along with the group consensus. In terms of the creative process, they cannot accept divergent thinking, because they have already converged on the right policy or plan. Victims of groupthink therefore eliminate creativity altogether to the extent that no new perspectives or alternatives are encouraged. The group process to some extent displays processes that occur at the individual level but writ large. ‘Premature closure,’ or the unwillingness to explore alternatives after the initial diagnosis, is the most common error in medical diagnoses, for instance.

Groupthink and Group Polarization

Groups sometimes employ deficient decision-making procedures that produce poor decisions. ‘Groupthink’ is one such poor decision-making process in which the desire for unanimity overrides the motivation to consider rational alternative courses of action. Several factors lead to groupthink and its corresponding symptoms including high group cohesiveness, impartial leadership, insulation from external information, and stress from external threat. Groupthink can have disastrous ramifications, and has been identified as the cause of many poor crisis decisions made by governments; for example, the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco (the failed attempt by the United States to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro's regime thought to be the result of a flawed decision made by President Kennedy and his advisors). There is only partial empirical support for groupthink and more recently researchers have proposed alternative groupthink models. The group centrism approach claims that groups whose members strive to maintain unity and have a high need for closure are more likely to make poor decisions. Another model proposes that negative decisional features previously thought to cause groupthink combined with shared social identity, restrictive norms, and lack of confidence will trigger groupthink.

Another potential bias in group decision making is ‘group polarization,’ a tendency for group discussion to cause the group and its members to shift to a more extreme position than initially held by the individual members. Polarization occurs when the prediscussion group preference tends to favor one pole of the decision-making dimension. The group decision is then more extreme in this direction. Social comparison (normative influence) processes, exposure to persuasive arguments (informational influence), and social identity processes are offered as explanations for group polarization.

7.7.1 Secrecy

Secrecy in an organization can result from the nature of the business, from lack of communication, or from the complexity or technical intricacy of a product; it can also be a form of intentional silence that occurs when people are belittled for pointing out flaws. In the crisis, two prevalent forms of secrecy—organizational silence and complexity—compromised concern about consequences.

Many failed leaders cultivated high levels of organizational silence through what is called “groupthink.” Groupthink allows those in leadership positions to “denigrate or belittle those who tell them they are wrong… and keep those who tell them they are wrong at a distance.… Loyal dissenters self-censor to avoid being thought of as somehow not ‘on the team’ or ‘with the program’.”60 Because nobody wanted to tell the emperor he had no clothes, risk and its consequences remained hidden.

The complexity of loans and securities introduced their own type of secrecy, making these products opaque to buyers and allowing lenders and sellers to mask their risk. Those who sold these “inherently fuzzy” financial products could easily “reshape reality in a way that was comfortable for them.”61 Because these products were too difficult to explain or to understand, agents kept concerns to themselves and set aside social interests in favor of the commissions they would receive. Another form of complexity also encouraged secrecy: the sheer volume of transactions. With stacks of loan applications on their desks or directives to push loan ratings through quickly, lenders, underwriters, and rating agencies simply had no time to nitpick or investigate. In fact, many were paid not to look.

Sources of Conformity

Power conformity is parallel behavior to obtain rewards and avoid punishments from the larger group. Groupthink, as discussed by Janis, is a special instance of conformity and represents an unwillingness by members of a small group, such as advisors, to criticize the leader even when they believe that the decisions are erroneous.

Informational conformity occurs when one imitates the group to obtain knowledge, for example, looking up at a building when one sees others looking up. Conformity may be merely coincidental as when pedestrians cross a street at the appropriate change of the signal. Normative or value-based conformity results from a prior set of beliefs about the appropriate conduct in a situation. If the actions are believed to be most appropriate for solving a problem, then the conformity is functional.

Conformity and nonconformity can be individualistic or minority. Minority nonconformity includes conformity among the members of the subgroup to each other. Dissent implies nonconformity as a result of conscious disagreement.

Conformity is generally identified in static terms, that is, a comparison of behavior to that of the group. Dynamic conformity results from behavioral changes that are closer to the group’s position.

There may also be conformity to inaction. The individual attempts to obtain cues from the group for the appropriate response in a situation and, if no action is observed, the inactivity may be imitated.

Sources of Conformity

Power conformity is parallel behavior to obtain rewards and avoid punishments from the larger group. Groupthink, as discussed by Janis (1982), is a special instance of conformity and represents an unwillingness by members of a small group, such as advisors to a leader, to criticize the leader even when they believe that the decisions are erroneous.

Informational conformity occurs when one imitates the group to obtain knowledge, for example, observing others to determine whether it is safe to cross a street. Conformity may be merely coincidental as when pedestrians cross a street at the appropriate change of the signal. Normative or value-based conformity results from a prior set of beliefs about the appropriate conduct in a situation. If the actions are believed to be most appropriate for solving a problem, then the conformity is functional.

Conformity and nonconformity can be individualistic or minority. Minority nonconformity includes conformity among the members of the subgroup. Dissent implies nonconformity as a result of conscious disagreement but dissent as behavior simply consists of opinions or other actions that differ from the majority.

Conformity is generally identified in static terms, that is, a comparison of behavior to that of the group. Dynamic conformity results from behavioral changes that move closer to the group's position.

There may also be conformity to inaction. The individual attempts to obtain cues from the group for the appropriate response in a situation and, if no action is observed, the inactivity may be imitated.

Tyranny and Intragroup Processes: Janis's Groupthink Research

For nearly half a century, small-group research has been dominated by the concept of ‘groupthink’ (see Haslam et al., 2006). What is more, the idea has migrated from academia into the public domain and is used to explain everything from the financial crash to the latest fashions. As Fuller and Aldag observed a while back, “Groupthink is presented as accepted wisdom in sources ranging from Educational Gerontology to the Utne Reader, from The New Criterion to Vogue” (1998: p. 166).

In his original text, Janis (1972) compared four of the most calamitous decisions in recent U.S. history – neglecting the defense of Pearl Harbor in 1941, invading North Korea in 1950, invading of the Bay of Pigs in 1960, escalating the war in Vietnam between 1964 and 1967 – and contrasted them to two rather more successful decisions – developing the Marshall plan after World War I and the handling of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. He argued that the former (unlike the latter) were characterized by an overestimation of in-group wisdom, a denigration of the out-group, and (most strikingly) overwhelming pressures toward conformity even if this goes against one's private beliefs. Indeed self-appointed ‘mind-guards’ would censor and punish any indications of dissent. In short, everyone agrees with the group ‘line’ and no one is prepared to mention its flaws, however obvious these might be. In this way, illusion and delusion come to dominate the decision-making process.

These symptoms of groupthink, Janis argued, derived principally from high group cohesion along with poor group structures and high levels of external stress. As Janis himself wrote “the more amiability and esprit de corps among the members of a policy-making group, the greater is the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions against outgroups” (1972: p. 13).

It follows from this analysis that the best way to avoid groupthink – to achieve the successful outcome of the Cuban missile crisis rather than the failure of the Bay of Pigs – is to dismantle the group, or at least to weaken the ties between group members. Janis advocates various measures such as bringing in external advisors, creating divisions within the group, and challenging group norms, all of which are designed to counteract ‘the we-feeling of solidarity’ (1982: p. 7).

There are, however, a series of problems with this analysis. Indeed, some critics mischievously suggest that such is the discrepancy between the continuing academic popularity of the Janis analysis and the actual evidence for it (for reviews, see Aldag and Fuller, 1993; Park, 1990), that just about the only argument for groupthink is the behavior of the research community that has studied this phenomenon (Haslam et al., 2006). Indeed, Fuller and Aldag go so far as to state that “in fact, in no study have all results been consistent with the [groupthink] model” (1990: p. 167).

First of all, then, there is no indication that the various components of groupthink (in-group boosting, out-group denigration, and enforced consensus) form a reliable cluster (Tetlock et al., 1992). Second, there is inconsistent evidence as to whether cohesiveness is an antecedent of groupthink phenomena, especially uncritical conformity (e.g., Flowers, 1977; Leana, 1985). Third, groupthink processes can lead to good organizational decisions as much as bad ones (Peterson et al., 1998). Moreover, as Haslam et al. (2006) argue, lack of shared identity and group cohesion makes it more difficult for group members to maintain the commitment necessary to drive any decision to success – especially in the face of opposition by out-groups.

In combination, these various findings point to two important conclusions. The first is that the ability to dissent, the willingness to consider discrepant information, the ways in which out-groups are treated and the nature (as well as the quality) of group decisions may have less to do with group psychology per se than with the specific norms and values associated with particular group identities. That is, whereas some groups may demand total deference to authority, others may be more accepting of dissent (Jetten and Hornsey, 2011; Packer, 2008). This is reflected in research that highlights how nationalism need not be a matter of ‘my country right or wrong’ but may take the form of critical attachment in which loyalty manifests itself as a willingness to identify and criticize national deficiencies (Roccas et al., 2006; Staub, 1997). Moreover, as studies in Israel, the United Kingdom, and the former Yugoslavia have shown, it is not identification with the group in and of itself which predicts denigration and support for the oppression of out-groups, but rather identification combined with a specific ideology of national glorification (Elcheroth and Reicher, 2014; Roccas et al., 2006). To cite Haslam et al. (2006), then: “although previous research has tended to see poor group decision making as a reflection of psychological deficiencies, there are strong grounds for questioning this assumption and arguing instead that problems of over-commitment are more political in nature” (p. 623, emphasis in the original).

We can also cite Haslam et al. (2006) in order to introduce the other conclusion. They ask: “how revolutionary movements (e.g. in science, politics and industry) would ever get off the ground if groups disavowed their own groupyness and were forever attentive to individual voices of doubt and dissent within their ranks” (p. 623). That is, to abandon groups is to leave the status quo inviolate. It is to leave existing tyrannies in place more than to create new ones. Such advice therefore serves less as part of the solution than as part of the problem of tyranny.

How, then, should we respond? The analysis provided thus far begins to suggest an alternative approach, one which is based on embracing rather than rejecting cohesive groups but which focuses on the content of group norms and hence on whether group power is used to create or challenge oppression in society. This analysis and these conclusions become clearer when we move from the consideration tyranny in intragroup processes to that of tyranny in intergroup processes.

Thinking and Acting Critically Requires Courage, Joy, and a Sense of Humor

The transformation of conflicts and the use of violence frequently take place in a context, characterized by tension, groupthink, and intolerance. It's important to research and expose the ugly face of repression, discrimination, segregation, hunger, etc. Buckminster Fuller observed that “All of humanity is in peril, if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth and all the truth, and to do so promptly—right now” (Buckminster Fuller, 1981). Socrates reminded us that we become wiser when we acknowledge our ignorance. Acting and thinking critically requires courage and resilience. “When we look around at the influence of money, of armies, of legal officials, or indeed at the ease with which writers are silenced through censorship, violence and imprisonment, it seems that the word is a fragile blossom” (Saul, 1992). Erasmus' complaint that “matters have come to such a pass, that it is deemed foolish and wicked to open once mouth against war, or to venture a syllable of peace” is applicable to the Western military operations in the Middle East and North Africa. Courage and resilience are needed to help to deal with the sanctioning measures against criticism, which can take the form of warnings, threats, peer pressure, surveillance, the impediment of promotion or research funding, tarnish someone's reputation, ostracism, arrest, etc. Think about the muzzling of whistleblowers. Intellectual solidarity, the commitment of scholars to use research and education for realizing the necessary conditions for building sustainable peace, should be advanced. Keeping a sense of deep happiness and humor is also useful. Gregory Bateson considers joy a tool enabling to develop power (Charlton, 2008). Humor can help to prevent deadly seriousness, and be used as an effective weapon. In 2007 protesters dressed as clowns confronted a “white power” march in Charlotte, NC, holding signs that read “wife power” and throwing white flour in the air. It made the white nationalists look ridiculous and avoided a violent confrontation, which would have served the racists (Friedman, 2020). The worst thing is to believe, for a moment, that you don't make a difference.