Psychology at work by Robert S. Feldman
Groupthink : caving in to conformity
The Bay of Pigs in Cuba marks the site of one of the U.S. government's most embarassing fiascoes : an abortive attempt to overthrow the governement of Fidel Castro. In what he later labeled a "stupid" decision, President John F. Kennedy and a group of advisers decided to support a small group of men with funds and arms to attack Cuba. The 1400 invaders were expected to draw support from the Cuban people and easily defeat the much larger Cuban military forces. The reality was quite different : Within three days of the start of the invasion, most of the attackers had been captured.
With the clarity of hindsight, it is easy to see that Kennedy's decision to allow an ill-equipped group of Cuban refugees to invade a neighboring country that had been well armed by the Soviet Union was the height of folly. How could such a poor decision have been made?
A phenomenon known as groupthink provides an explanation. Groupthink is a type of thinking in which group members share such a strong motivation to achieve consensus that they lose the ability to critically evaluate alternative points of view (Janis, 1972, 1989; 't Hart, 1991). Groupthink is most likely to occur when there is a popular or powerful leader who is surrounded by people of lower status -obviously the case with the U.S. President and his advisers, but also true in a variety of other organizations.
The phenomenon of groupthink is apt to occur in many types of situations (McCauley, 1989):
There is an illusion that the group is invulnerable and cannot make major errors in judgment.
Information that is contradictory to the dominant group view tends to be ignored, discounted, or minimized.
Pressure is placed on group members to conform to the majority view -althrough the pressure may be relatively subtle.
The pressure to conform discourages minority viewpoints from being brought before the group. Consequently, there "appear" to be unanimity in the group, even if this is not really the case.
There is an illusion of morality. Because the group views itself as representing something just and moral (in the case of the Bay of Pigs invasion, it was the American cause), members assume that any action the group takes will be appropriate, just, and moral as well.
The consequences of groupthink are numerous, and nearly always negative. Groups tend to limit their list of possible solutions to just a few, and they spend relatively little time considering any alternatives once the leader seems to be leaning toward a particular solution. In fact, they may completely ignore information that challenges a developing consensus. Because research shows that more than a few historical episodes reflect the workings of groupthink, it is important for members of any group to be on guard (Tetlock et al., 1992).
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