The theory of groupthink was pioneered by a social psychologist Irving Janis in his hypotheses on Victims of Groupthink. The theory involves a psychological process that takes place within a group of individuals, where the objective to ensurepeaceful coexistence in the group leads to a deviant decision-making outcome. The group participants engage in a mode of thinking in which they intimately interact within a cohesive group. The group members yearning for a uniform resolve to disregard their interests to endorse other courses of action realistically.The conditions under which groupthink is more likely to take place include High degree of intimacy in a group, high level of group safety from external of information sources, inadequate technical processes to search information and embrace it, aristocratic leadership, similarity within group members’ origins and absence of conflicts and disagreements among group members.
Groupthink occurs when a group is comprised of participants who are competent and able to resolve to better decisions. However, they eventually make a bad one due to a flawed group process and bonded similarity pressures (Eder, 2019). When group members have a strong common social bond, groupthink is inevitable. This happens in an instance where an authoritative leader authors a positive group motivation, and in distressful momentswhen the group needs to step amid the crisis and resolve to a critical decision (Arpita, 2015). The issue is that the groups experiencing groupthink are unprepared to deliberate on emerging issues, and the group members fail to table their opinions. As the group participants are not at free will to air their thoughts do not align with their director or inject new external blood with different information, the group retarded at not resolving to fully informed decision.
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For groupthink to occur, group participants essentially minimize possibilities of conflicts and reach an agreeable decision without in-depth assessment of other opinions and ideas. The group should be essentially excommunicate itself from outside information influence; individual group loyalty prevent participants from airing their controversial opinions as optional resolves; individual free will and liberty to express oneself is lost, and the group has to undergo the “illusion of invulnerability,” an enforced conviction that an appropriate decision has been unanimously reached (Eder, 2019). Typically, the group participants are subjected to elevated pressure when making a decision, and it does not have an impartial leader. These conditions can make a group to resolve to a tragic decision.
An example of groupthink includes a case of Johnny Carson, a 30-year TV caster of The Tonight Show (NBC’s TV show). When the latter exited, NBC CEO was torn between resolutions. On the candidate to succeedJohn: Jay Leno or David Letterman? All the conditions for groupthink to occur where present. The resolution group, with its director being Bob Wright the NBC’s CEO, was intimately united, free from external influence, members had common originality subjected under distressful conditions to reach a set resolution. Wright’s presumptive idea was Leno was an appropriate candidate for the job, and he dominantly made known his opinion right from the start “…NBC had been in existence for more than 30 years with viewership that anticipated specific things, and Jay Leno appears as the perfect candidate for this, while David remained a good deal for the late show”(Eder, 2019).None of the group participants dared to voice their opinions, to challenging the CEO’s opinion, and NBC selected Leno over Letterman. This resolution later proved ineffective for NBC as Letterman afterward had signed a contractual agreement with CBS for his Late Show and launched a stiff competition against Leno’s show and beat him in both ratings anddollar commercials.
A Christian worldview on the theory of group thinking can be found in the New Testament epistles, as narrated by Paul on the behaviors that can violate a closed group bond andwiden thinking in a morefree will expression and conduct. In Matthew 19:14(New Revised Standard Version), Paul rebukes a group of Christians for being childish in their thinking and their Christian behavior when they meet together and how their behavior isinfluencing their set objectives as believers (Stoffel,2017). Paul sensitizes the group to improve their thinking, then conquers on evil matters the membershas to act even less than children; "infants." Paul goes ahead to differentiate "children" and "adults" as behavior and thinking that is more suitable for a growing Christian group.
References
Arpita Das Behl. (2015). Groupthink: The Role of Leadership in Enhancing and Mitigating the Pitfall in Team Decision-Making Northwestern University | School of Education & Social Policy. Sesp.northwestern.edu.
Eder. F. (2019). Making Concurrence-Seeking Visible: Groupthink, Discourse Networks, and the 2003 Iraq War. Foreign Policy Analysis, 15(1),
Stoffel, B. (2017). Reducing Groupthink: An Exegetical Research Analysis of 1 Corinthians 13: 1-14: 25. PRODUCTION STAFF, 53.
