KASHIKA SACHDEVA

URVASHI GAUTAM
Marvin Shaw (1981) defines a group as 2 or more people who, for longer than a few moments interact with
and influence one another. Groups may exist for several reasons-to accomplish one's need to belong, to
provide information to supply rewards to accomplish goals.

DECISION MAKING

One of the most important activities that groups perform is decision making .Decision making process
involves combining and integration of available information to choose one out of several possible courses of
action. when groups first begin to discuss any issue their members rarely start out in complete agreement
rather they come to the decision making task with a range of views. however groups usually do reach a
decision after a long period of discussion. Certain processes may affect the decision making ability of the
group, such as Groupthink and Group Polarization.
Cohesiveness within the groups is viewed beneficial to increase the task motivation and make groups
more satisfying, however when cohesiveness reaches an extremely high level it develops into
Groupthink. Irving Janis (1982) introduced the term groupthink and defined it as "the mode of
thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive
ingroup that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action .“

SYMPTOMS OF GROUPTHINK

1)illusion of invulnerability
2)unquestioned belief in groups morality
3)Stereotyping
4)self censorship
5)illusion of unanimity
6)direct pressure
7)conformity
8)gatekeeping/ mind guards
 Some examples of Groupthink are:

1) The Vietnam war

2) NASA space shuttle failure
3) The movie- Mean Girls
4) Dog training

How to Resolve Groupthink?

1) The leader must avoid expressing his personal opinions while assigning tasks in
order to reduce pressure on other members to confirm with him.
2) For an unbiased view a third-party must be involved.
3) Opinions and criticisms from experts of a particular field outside the group must be
included to ensure efficient decision making.
4) The leader must appoint an critical evaluator from (within the group) who would
weigh the value of the decisions made by the group.
Across many different kinds of decisions and many different contexts, groups show a pronounced
tendency to shift towards views that are more extreme than others with which they initially,
individually began (Burnstein, 1983; Lamm and Myers, 1978). This phenomenon is called Group
Polarization.

In 1968, James Stoner reported that the decisions groups make are often riskier than the individual
views held by the members before discussion. This phenomenon was called the Risky Shift.
Here is an example of a study regarding Risky Shift:

Rosy is a successful teacher; she makes a good salary and enjoys her work. But she has always wanted to
open a restaurant. She has already selected a few chefs for the place and has started talks about the loan
she would need. If the business is successful, she will realize her lifelong dream, and if not, she might
enter into a series of debts and misfortunes.

Stoner (1968) first asked individual views whether she should open a restaurant or not, and they
took a decision individually, ranking chances of success on a 10 pointer scale, where 1 meant “opening
the restaurant even if success is unlikely” and 10 meant “opening the restaurant only if success is
certain”.
The subjects were then brought together into a group and were asked to discuss
each problem and reach a unanimous group decision. Under these conditions there
was a strong tendency for the group decision to involve greater risk than the average
of decisions made by the individuals.
Many studies have been replicated to study Risky Shift, but some researchers have
found exceptions. Today, research has shown that when the initial opinions of group
members tend towards risk, group discussion results in a shift towards greater risk,
and when the initial stand of a group is conservative, then group discussion results
in extreme conservatism. Hence, the basic finding is that group discussion leads to
more extreme (or polarized) decisions.

PERSPECTIVES ON GROUP POLARIZATION

1. Pervasive Arguments Theory- When we hear novel arguments that support our position on
an issue, we become more entrenched in our view (Burnstein and Vinokur, 1977). The
discussion that follows generates precisely these arguments and we become even more
committed and extreme: the group as a whole becomes polarized. Further, thinking about an
issue strengthens our opinion and reassures us of our correctness, as does the repetition of
our own and others’ arguments, because we have a tendency to pay more attention to
arguments that support our viewpoint and not negate it.
2. Social Comparison and Self-Presentational Processes (Goethals and Darley,
1987)- The idea is that group members are concerned with how their own DISADVANTAGES OF GROUP
opinions compare with those of others in the group. During discussion people POLARIZATION
may learn that others have similar attitudes and indeed that other people have
more extreme views than they do. A desire to be seen positively, as more
confident or bold, may lead members to shift towards positions that are more 1. Inability to reach consensus due
extreme than those of other group members. In this way, individuals tend to be to largely different views of
better than average. members.
2. Adoption of increasingly extreme
Research has accounted for both these explanations and has said that they both attitudes by members which can
usually occur together. lead to drastic measures being
taken by the person/group.
3. Social Identity Processes- The idea is that discussion forces group members 3. Inability to foster a healthy
to focus on their group membership and to identify with the group. This conversation to find a common
identification “pressurizes” the individual to conform his views to align them to ground to accommodate different
the perceived norm of the group, mostly towards an extreme position. Rather views; hinders decision making.
than perceiving the true average position of the group before discussion,
members perceive the group norm as more extreme.

Group discussion do not always lead to polarization. When members of a group

are more or less evenly split on an issue, discussion often leads to a
compromise between the opposing views of group members (Burnstein and
Vinokur, 1977). This process has been called “de-polarization”.
 One important example of group polarization in action is the
decision making process of a jury. Many studies have shown that
during civil trials, the jury members often decided on a punitive
damage award that is larger or smaller than the award they were
considering as individual jurors. What tends to happen is that if
individuals are in favor of a low award, following a group
discussion, the award will be even lower, but if the individual
members of the jury believe a higher award is more appropriate,
the final award will be higher still.

The same effect has also been observed in cases of racial and sexual
prejudice. Individuals holding fairly moderate views tend to become
even less prejudiced in a group setting, but individuals who are
already highly prejudiced, always inflate their views in a group
environment.

Group polarization has also been observed in online group

discussions and research has shown that when members of a group
are in an anonymous environment, or cannot see each other, the
effects of group polarization are far greater than those observed in a
traditional face to face meeting environment.
1. Groupthink requires homogeneous thought in the group, whereas Group
Polarization refers to the extreme stands taken by individual group members
as a result of group discussions, and everyone might not necessarily have the
same opinion.
2. Groupthink is characterized by faulty decisions, which do not always have
to be extreme in nature, but Group Polarization necessarily means that
extreme decisions are taken, or attitudes are tuned towards extreme
polarities.
3. Groupthink results out of a necessity to maintain the cohesiveness of the
group as the dissenter is viewed unfavorably. Whereas, in group polarization,
a sense of competition about ‘being better than average’ is present.
4. Achievement of a consensus, even at the cost of individual opinions, is
considered important in groupthink but such a consensus, by definition, is not
a part of what we consider group polarization to be.
5. Group Polarization fosters a belief that you are right and the
other person is wrong, but in Groupthink there is a tendency to
stifle individual opinions to align with the majority views in the
group.
6. The direction of thinking in Group Polarization is ‘towards
the extremes’ of what the initial position of an individual was. In
contrast, the direction of thinking in Groupthink is towards
anything that the majority considers correct, be it extreme or
not.
7. Group Polarization can lead to groupthink, which is when bad
decisions are made by a group because members sacrifice their
own opinions for the greater good.
8. The major disadvantage of groupthink is avoidance of
individual (although dissenting) viewpoints, whereas the major
disadvantage of group polarization is inability of individuals in
a group to have constructive conversations, even though their
views differ, and not being able to reach a common solution.