Collaborating
Karen Stainsby, Mari Roberts in Develop your Interpersonal and Self-Management Skills, 2018
A group is happiest when everyone in it shares the same view (even though that view may well be misguided and not held by the majority of members if asked on an anonymous basis). Groupthink (a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis) can cause any group to make bad or impulsive decisions, based on little information or selecting only that which confirms the group’s view. Disagreement is considered dangerous to the group and the unconscious concern of members is that dissent will lead to exclusion from the group (perhaps by scapegoating or other subtle methods). A good, albeit extreme, example is a collection of football supporters who suddenly (and as if from nowhere), take on a new collective identity and turn violent. In the workplace (and elsewhere) groupthink can reinforce the scapegoating process.
The dynamics of groups online
Ciarán Mc Mahon in Psychological Insights for Understanding COVID-19 and Media and Technology, 2020
As cited above, sometimes a kind of ‘groupthink’ can emerge in groups. Groupthink refers to changes in the cognitions of individuals in groups, especially when they are in contact with, or interacting with, other group members. The reasons why groupthink occurs has been examined extensively by many social psychologists (Bandura, 1986). Among young people who are likely to join online groups, peer pressure may be one reason why groupthink occurs. In 2008, boyd completed a qualitative study on American teenagers who joined online social networks. boyd reported that strong and direct peer pressure was placed on American teenagers to join online social networks, such as Facebook and Bebo. The teenagers interviewed in boyd’s study reported that, in addition to pressure from peers to join these groups, they also experienced feelings of isolation and being ‘left out’ if they did not join such online communities.
Qualitative research methodologies and methods
John Maltby, Glenn A. Williams, Julie McGarry, Liz Day in Research Methods for Nursing and Healthcare, 2014
There are some issues with focus groups. The most often cited problem is something called ‘groupthink’ (Janis, 1972). This is where people may tend to conform to the majority position or opinion, even though they don’t really agree, because they feel they will be derided if they disagree with the group, or made foolish for expressing their own opinion. As a result, people might come up with extreme and radical proposals for action rather than taking a more careful approach if they were asked about things on their own. However, if a focus group is carefully facilitated by the moderator, it should be possible for the group setting to create original thought or generate ideas on a topic or phenomena that researchers wouldn’t have found out about if they had just interviewed each of the participants on a one-to-one basis.
Groupthink among health professional teams in patient care: A scoping review
Published in Medical Teacher, 2022
Karissa DiPierro, Hannah Lee, Kevin J. Pain, Steven J. Durning, Justin J. Choi
One example of a potential systematic bias in group decision making is groupthink. Groupthink is a theory that describes when highly cohesive groups exhibit premature consensus seeking (i.e. premature closure on the group level) that leads to poor decision making (Janis 1982; McCauley 1998). Groupthink could occur at all levels of the hierarchy in health organizations, from frontline clinical teams to senior managers and leaders of the organization (Mannion and Thompson 2014). For example, if a medical team member observes that the working diagnosis does not explain all of the patient’s symptoms, but does not mention this concern to the medical team due to the assumption that the group’s thought process and diagnostic decision must be correct, this group would be exhibiting groupthink.
Leadership, Thought Diversity, and the Influence of Groupthink
Published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 2019
Michelle Cleary, David Lees, Jan Sayers
Groupthink is a way of thinking that people adopt when they participate in a connected ‘in-group’ whose modus operandi is consensus as opposed to consideration of alternative views or actions (Janis, 1997, p. 237). Groupthink is also referred to as ‘concurrence-seeking tendency’ (Shirey, 2012, p. 67), whereby decision makers seek concurrence instead of making calculated, and considered decisions (Yetiv, 2003). It has been suggested that groupthink arises in cohesive groups, and in circumstances where individual group members automatically revert to applying pressure to maintain harmony within the group when the need for decision-making arises (Janis, 1997). Whilst group members may perceive these actions to reflect group solidarity and like-mindedness, they can be counterproductive (Janis, 1997, p. 237). If the close-knit group adopts a concurrence-seeking tendency when making decisions as opposed to considering other options (Janis, 1997), decisions may not always be the best decisions (Macleod, 2011). As Janis notes, the ‘superglue of solidarity that bonds people together often causes their mental process to get stuck’ (Janis in Shirey, 2012, p. 67).
Using an experiential learning model to teach clinical reasoning theory and cognitive bias: an evaluation of a first-year medical student curriculum
Published in Medical Education Online, 2023
Justin J. Choi, Jeanie Gribben, Myriam Lin, Erika L. Abramson, Juliet Aizer
Other students identified potential ‘group biases’ such as group polarization (when groups make more extreme judgments and decisions than the initial position of its individual members), groupthink (when group harmony and cohesion leads to premature consensus and may inhibit the expression of individual opinion), and social loafing (when individuals feel ‘lost in the crowd’ and may have a reduced level effort in group situations) [51]: One person comes up with a crazy, zebra idea, which leads to multiple people latching on, then the crazy, zebra idea becomes main idea of the group. (P51)Groupthink was pretty prevalent. I noticed that a lot of times, it was easy to just put aside the diagnoses that stood out and were not included in all of our illness scripts during the conversations. (P68)When groups were large enough, it was easy to get a bit lost in so many ideas and discussions—particularly if I had a knowledge gap and was not able to follow the thought process. (P70)
Related Knowledge Centers
- Confirmation Bias
- Critical Thinking
- Conformity
- Decision-Making
- Social Psychology
- Peer Pressure
- Group Cohesiveness
- Rationalization
- Stereotype
- Self-Censorship