Groupthink Case

As human beings, we are often called upon to make decisions. Everyday across the globe, we regularly gather to make decisions that impact our lives. Unfortunately, these decisions can sometimes, turn out to be wrong, due to many reasons. For instance, governments often waste billions in bad projects or decide to wage unlawful wars; thus causing many people to suffer. Commanders in the battlefields habitually make decisions that lead to human catastrophes. Corporation executives, recurrently decide to increase fees that ultimately yield to customer's dissatisfaction. Certainly, the factors that contribute to the making of wrong decisions are several; however, the most common reason is a psychological phenomenon known as groupthink.

In my essay, I will briefly explain groupthink. In addition, I will elaborate on the causes and present a notorious illustration of groupthink. Lastly, this paper will furnish guidelines on how to steer clear of groupthink.

Admittedly, in small group interaction, there are many factors that influence the functioning of a group, namely, in decision making process. Decision making process refers to the cognitive process of reaching a decision. As an internal influence in the Tubb model system, the decision making can either be negatively or positively impacted by various variables. Elements such as creativity, effective communication between individual or effective leadership can undoubtedly help group members find effective solutions to specific issues. On the hand, there are elements that can also hinder a group's performance. We can name negative conflicts among members, an autocratic leadership style, or a psychological occurrence called group think. As U.S army Major Johnson explains in his work called, "Effects of groupthink on tactical decision making", groupthink was developed by a social psychologist named Irving Jarvis. Groupthink is an occurrence where members of a group fail to critically to evaluate each other's ideas. Members come up with an undisputed decision in spite of the existence of better alternatives. If we refer to a passage from "Why the best executives make the worst decision," groupthink is defined by Jarvis as " a mode of thinking that people engage in, when deeply involved in a cohesive group, when the member's striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternatives course of action."(Ben-Hur, 2010) We can cite the "the bay of pigs invasion" as an illustration of bad decisions made because of groupthink. A passage reveals that, decades ago, CIA and military leaders wanted to use Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro. It is believed that, after a lengthy deliberation among his top advisors, US President, John Kennedy approved an unsuccessful covert invasion which turned out be quite disastrous (Wright, 2003). Thousands of U.S combatants were either dead or captured;