{"id":25727,"date":"2022-09-12T19:00:49","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T02:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=25727"},"modified":"2023-06-26T10:08:25","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T17:08:25","slug":"psychology-of-groupthink-desperate-dangerous-desire-for-social-acceptance","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/psychology-of-groupthink-desperate-dangerous-desire-for-social-acceptance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Psychology of Groupthink and the Desperate, Dangerous Desire for Social Acceptance"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a slippery slope in the climb toward social acceptance. Why do people do what they do to be part of something, not just in college environments but in foreign policy war rooms, in workplaces, in locker rooms, and beyond?<\/span><\/p>\n

Hazing<\/span><\/i><\/a> explores the sometimes deadly rituals of belonging that are fueled by a tradition of secrecy, power, and groupthink, and the lengths people will go to in order to completely fit in, to not rock the boat, even if going against logic or normalcy. Why do people defy their own inner moral codes just so they can <\/span>belong<\/span><\/i>? What can the “hive mind<\/strong>” accomplish and is it worth the risks of something going terribly awry? (<\/span>The phrase “hive mind” is <\/span>first credited to sci-fi writer James H. Schmitz<\/span><\/a> in his short story, <\/span>Second Night of Summer<\/span><\/i>, wherein a hive mind correlates to the way a colony of bees behaves, as if directed by a single intelligence.)<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Groupthink?<\/b><\/p>\n

Groupthink<\/strong> is a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group. First made prominent by social psychologist Irving Janis, his 1972 study specifically focused on the psychological mechanics that led to foreign policy decisions such as the Pearl Harbor bombing, the Vietnam War, and the Bay of Pigs invasion. (The term “groupthink” was inspired by Orwell’s <\/span>1984<\/span><\/i> which used the idea of “doublethink” for highly suggestive ideas or expressions, first used in an article by William Whyte in <\/span>Fortune<\/span><\/i> magazine<\/span><\/a> 20 years before Janis.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Groupthink stands for an excessive form of concurrence-seeking among members of high prestige, tightly knit policy-making groups. <\/span>Excessive<\/span><\/i> to the extent that group members come to value the group and being part of it higher than anything else, causing them to strive for quick and painless unanimity on the issues the group has to confront. To preserve the clubby atmosphere, group members suppress personal doubts, silence dissenters, and follow the group leader’s suggestions. [<\/span>Irving L. Janis’ Victims of Groupthink<\/span><\/i>, Paul ‘t Hart]<\/span><\/p>\n\"Otherwise\n

Essentially, they believe in their group’s morality above all, and have a distorted view of reality, simplifying any opponents as inherently evil, while forsaking ethics. Naturally this mentality, Janis demonstrated, led to some serious foreign policy fiascos, famously the Bay of Pigs<\/strong> invasion that went horribly awry for Kennedy’s White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Kennedy, the consequences were so catastrophic that observers couldn\u2019t help but wonder how such a monumentally bad decision could have been made\u2014especially since Kennedy spent days discussing it with a team of famously brilliant advisors, including Robert McNamara, Robert Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Allen Dulles, and about 40 others. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were 50 or so of us, presumably the most experienced and smartest people we could get,\u201d Kennedy <\/span>would later recall<\/span><\/a>. \u201cBut five minutes after it began to fall in, we all looked at each other and asked, \u2018How could we have been so stupid?\u2019\u201d [\u2013<\/span>Jay Dixit, <\/span>Neuroleadership<\/span><\/i><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n