#4 Does my Psych Group suffer from Groupthink???

KEY : * = Refer to end of entry for examples

On Friday (26^th September), my psychology group stayed back to do some work on our up-coming presentation. Even though a few left early, 4 of us stayed back until 4pm (since 11am) trying to organise all our compiled information onto PowerPoint slides. During these 5 hours, we escalated from relaxed systematic revising, to caffeine driven ecstatic debaters (who were reduced to having to put our hand up to talk, to avoid the constant cut-ins).
While I was on the way home, I was laughing thinking about the events of the day, and thought how great it would be to use for my COM blog. As I went through the slides seeing where today’s scenario fit in, I came across the symptoms of groupthink as my topic.

The first symptom of groupthink is an illusion of invulnerability.

However, it doesn’t apply to “us” as the initial reason for forming the group was for an educational purpose and therefore not for any personal social motive. Meaning, the reason for the grouping was part of a requirement rather than a choice.

Since we didn’t really know anybody during the first week of school, we chose our members based on who “just so happened to be around”, rather than through the process of evaluation.

Therefore, our group’s potential is not based upon how well we have done together in the past (where, if we always scored high in the past, we would tend to assume we are always right); but on learning what each of the current individuals can contribute to the group (no reason to assume that our “group” is better)

*

At one point “we” almost unknowingly resulted in a minor case of belief in our group’s own morality.

We got caught up in a prolonged, in-depth, opinionative, argument trying to analyse a single Research Article (which we need to use to illustrate our presentation).

Each of us had (accidentally) completely disregarded the fact that if none of our group members shared the same understanding from the article, then how will our audience?

In turn, this could have led to our audience interpreting that our group only believed in its own actions and beliefs.

The third symptom, shared stereotypes, is not a problem interfering with our group, because we only state what is right, but don’t necessarily state who or what is wrong.

We encourage questions, and will respond factually. If there are no facts to back any specific answer, we will give a possible opinion, but state that it is simply an opinion.

The symptom that has had the most relevance with our group is collective rationalization.

We spent over an hour, trying to make sense of the same “single Research Article” as mentioned earlier. During the hour, we changed the way things were worded, incorporated our perceptions with each of the other member’s understandings, tried out different approaches via trial and error, and resulting in us drawing a conclusion based upon numerous mixed up bits of information, which were in fact inaccurate, and we were aware of it.

**

It is hard to say if our group suffers from self-censorship, as everyone seems open about their opinions, as well as the fact that I can’t read into their minds to see if they’re keeping some things to themselves. Personally, I know that I’m very outspoken, so if there is anything on my mind, I am likely to say so. However there was a small case in the beginning, when we picked the topic to present on. One of our members said we should do “Conditioning”, and the others agreed, but I wasn’t really interested in that topic, and found that it require a lot of work. I decided not to voice out my opinion, because I felt that it wouldn’t be right for me to try and change the topic for a selfish reason being that “I didn’t like it”.

By not voicing out my opinion about the topic chosen to present on, I found that we had suffered from a little illusion of unanimity. Turns out that most of the members just agreed because they didn’t mind anything, not particularly because they wanted to do that specific topic.

Most of us are very debatable, opinionative and aren’t shy to fight it out with each other (in terms of our views and reasons). The quieter members do an equal part in the deciding by listening, evaluating and responding to the information being debated. As a result, our group doesn’t suffer from “pressure on dissenters” because everyone is actively involved without any apparent fears.

The last symptom, mind-guards has the least impact on our group, as the information we are using are all based on facts. If there is any information we are unclear of, we can always look in our textbooks, within the Research Reports we are analysing, or as a last resort we can ask the lecturer. Thus the only “outside information” (other than stated facts) is that from our lecturer, which we’re likely to take advice from.

It is clear that the effects and likeliness of these symptoms occurring greatly depends on what type of group is being evaluated. Social groups are likely to have varying results from education based groups, as work groups are likely to have varying results from certain religious groups. Even though a lot of these symptoms are interlinked, it doesn’t necessarily mean that groups suffer from all 8 of them at any one given time. As some are overcome, others may present themselves.

(*) This is an example of the way our group formed.
Christine in class -> Random Girl(RG1) late for class sits next to Christine because it was the closest seat.
End of lesson, teacher say’s group members names need to be submitted -> Christine turns to RG1, “want to work together?”.
G1’s JC friend (GUY1) self invites to group, based on past friendship with RG1.
Random guy (RG1) spotted sitting alone-> RG1 askes him to join group.
2 girls who are friends have no group -> ask if they can join us.
Random girl 2 (RG2) walks up to Christine and asks if she can join group.
Our last edition to the group Late Guy (LG) joined 3 weeks later – 3 days ago – because he hadn’t realised there was a group project until GUY1 mentioned it while sitting next to him in ESL.

(**)

The scenario was that, we had to find a single article that compared two different methods using the same experiment. When we were unable to, we drew a conclusion that maybe it was impossible to be done, and were willing to state that during our presentation, even though the teacher had specifically asked us to talk about an article that does compare. Later on we decided that since it wasn’t factually stated in any given text book or Research Report that the comparison was impossible, it wouldn’t be correct to state it during our presentation. So now we are back to square-one looking for an article that does (sigh).