Groupthink | INFJ Forum

Groupthink

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Phage

Community Member
May 8, 2010
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Have you heard of groupthink?

What are your views on it?

Here is wikipedia's definition:

Groupthink is a type of thought within a deeply cohesive ingroup whose members try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas.

Apologies if there has already been a thread for this.

Edit: I don't understand how this happens, I don't know how people just lose themselves to the crowd. Surrender offered Collective effervescence as an alternate definition.

Collective effervescence (CE) is a perceived energy formed by a gathering of people as might be experienced at a sporting event, a carnival, a rave, or a riot. This perception can cause people to act differently than in their everyday life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_effervescence
 
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surrender said:
It exists :)
Click to expand...

It exists, but it bothers me... People just just on the boat without thinking about an issue themselves?

I just wonder how one can lose themselves in a crowd of people? Idk, maybe I am too introverted.
 
Looks stupid and boring.
What's the point of even being in group if you're all going to want to agree with everyone...
 
Groupthink gets a bad rap when it produces bad consequences (the Holocaust, for example), and goes unnoticed the rest of the time. We all engage in it from birth onwards. There are some products of groupthink that stand up to moral and rational review (like the notion that mass human suffering should be avoided); others are too limited in scope, and result in localized groupthink that opposes that found in other regions.

I think the best results overall are typically produced by discouragement of groupthink among adults, but there's no escaping it entirely.
 
Yes, I totally agree with all of you.
 
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Current examples:

1. Birthers

2. Fervent supporters of Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who committed scientific fraud regarding putative causes of autism.
 
I've just finished up an audio course on critical thinking. It was 25, one hour long courses and went quite in depth into groupthink and delves into manifestations of groupthink in the cases of the bay of pigs and the challenger shuttle incident. Groupthink is also what they would call a "culture of yes" where decent is discouraged usually this is implied rather than said out right, although you do need some groupthink so that a company does not come to a grinding halt in a "culture of no" one of the best courses of action seems to be bringing lower levels of hierarchy up and letting them discuss things not related to their specific field in order to bring an outside prospective to the table. It is also helpful to remove high ranking officials from certain discussions so that people feel they can speak more freely, some of these things Kennedy implemented into the government system durning the time he was president. Having assigned devils advocates also helps.

Keep in mind these are "big decision" type issues I'm talking about here, things that need to be thought about with governments, agencies, and large corporations. Not necessarily things you really would need to worry about in all communities.
 
groupthink is gross.
it made this happen:

http://youtu.be/_10T4UYpzV8


EDIT: AH F*CKIN HELL. my links never work nowadays for some reason. =(
 
Phage said:
Have you heard of groupthink?

What are your views on it?

Here is wikipedia's definition:

Groupthink is a type of thought within a deeply cohesive ingroup whose members try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas.
Click to expand...

Once or twice.
I've even heard of `group grok', mass hallucination, organized religion, `politics', `culture', True Believers, and folie
 
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