Groupthink

AbstractSometimes groups make good decisions. Sometimes their decisions are disastrous. While reading about the poor decision‐making that led to the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Irving Janis (1982) began to develop the concept of groupthink. Asking how could so many smart people make stupid decisions when placed in groups, Janis analyzed policymakers and their processes of decision‐making in many different instances. He proposed the Orwellian‐like term groupthink in 1972 to describe a particular ailment of policymaking groups. Janis defined groupthink as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive ingroup, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (p. 9). Groupthink is further characterized by “a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from ingroup pressures” (p. 9).