The Benefits Of Groupthink

Putting together a team to cohesively work on a project or a goal in theory should be effective. But after a while without the benefit of outside independent thinkers or questioning the thoughts/actions of others within the group the process can become tainted. Eventually “ concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive ingroup that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action”1. The group's original purpose of creation becomes more and more ineffective as long as groupthink festers without treatment.

What is groupthink exactly? According to psychologists is “deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgments as a result of group pressures”1. In simpler terms it is the fear of ruining group cohesion and uniformity by going with the current instead of branching out with ideas that oppose it. Instead of achieving consensus they instead suppress critical thinking in order to achieve concurrence. But that’s not to say that every group whether large or small suffers from groupthink. Groupthink is not predetermined on each and every group that comes together to
The infamous bay of pigs invasion was planned by the Eisenhower administration and eventually carried out by the Kennedy administration after he took over. “The administration ignored questions and accepted stereotypes about the Cubans without questioning whether the Central Intelligence Agency information made sense”2. Or the bombing of Pearl Harbor when the leaders of Pearl Harbor ignored signs of the invasion but citing the fact that Japan would be wasting their efforts if they chose their course of action due to the relative power difference between the two countries. Or the United States invasion of Iraq when given false information the information was never challenged but instead intensified due to the September 11th