My podcast is about bringing critical thinking techniques, and especially a Socratic approach, to living in the world and engaging with it.

In this episode I look at the phenomenon of groupthink: What is it? Why is it so pernicious? And what can we do about it?

The term "groupthink" was coined by Irving Janis, a psychologist who introduced the term in a 1971 article in Psychology Today. He writes that the term is meant to be an invidious one - signifying poor decisions arising out of flawed, group-based processes - and that he crafted it in the tradition of George Orwell's newspeak.Janis used the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion as an exemplar, parsing through the public record of the decision-making process that led to the debacle. He identifies eight characteristics of groupthink, and then considers ways that a decision-making process can be crafted so as to avoid the possibility of groupthink.

I look to expand on this, considering the groupthink phenomenon from the perspective not only of a party who controls a committee or board's processes, but also that of the less powerful individual who finds him- or her-self caught up in a potential groupthink scenario. To illustrate my points, I construct a hypothetical workplace decision-making process, and evaluate the options available to a committee member who is about to be railroaded into accepting an outcome that will have adverse effects on his team.

It seems to me that - particularly during recent years - most people could point to any number of terrible groupthink decisions that affect them directly. This happens not only in one's own workplace, school, or local community, but also at the highest levels of government and geopolitics. Peer pressure and intolerance for dissent seem to run rampant in our society, and it's up to the thinking woman or man to push back when a group begins to veer, impervious, in the direction of a bad outcome.

I hope you find the episode thought-provoking and maybe even useful.

Music attribution:

Sunset Drive by Tokyo Music Walker | https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US