Beware groupthink!

Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

The distortion of reality testing and suspension of critical thinking which can occur in highly cohesive teams. Groupthink has been used to explain disasters such as Chernobyl and massive errors of political judgement such as the ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion of Cuba sponsored by the United States.
www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199253975/01student/glossary/glossary.htm

As a long-time management professor, I used to depart from the purely academic and esoteric from time to time to actually teach something of value to my students. For instance, when discussing the decision-making process, learning game theory has its moments, but I would also sneak in something more homely such as how to run a good meeting that discouraged obstacles to reaching the best solution.

Something that I attempted to impress upon my students (as they sat there gaping in wonder at my erudition) was to avoid groupthink at all costs. There is no greater impediment to making the best decision than to be satisfied with the current collective wisdom or group consensus.

What I have found over the years, as I've bounced from employer to employer, and more importantly from job sector to job sector, is how individuals and groups allow themselves to be arbitrarily constrained by the norms in their respective environments.

Take the religious front as an example. Having worked and worshiped with Mennonites, I have found that many of them think that they are the only ones who really understand pacifism.

Similarly, having worked with people of the Reformed community, they think that they are the only ones that really understand social justice. For example, as we were about to interview a candidate for a senior administrative position at a Reformed college where I was once employed, one of the search committee members said, "Well, we're about to find out if an Arminian knows anything about social justice." I'm Arminian and no one had ever questioned my knowledge of, or commitment to, justice simply because they were not aware of my theological persuasion.

[An Arminian rejects the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and election and believes that human free will is compatible with God's sovereignty.]

If people from either of these theological groups were to stick their heads outside of the holy huddle, they would find that they are greatly mistaken as to who believes what, and could strike whole new alliances in the fight for peace and justice in the world.

Similarly, I found as a public school board trustee that teachers tend to look at the world of education a certain way. So do university professors, but it's a different way. I surprised the socks off of my university colleagues once by having a high school teacher run one of my classes so that I could actually learn how to teach.

Managers tend to see the purpose of business life just like the business schools teach it. Union members and leaders take a very different view. But since they assume that each other is wrong, and don't often look for common ground, they develop absurd notions about each other. In addition, groups strongly discourage any challenge to this status quo thinking.

The tendency to assume that all that is important to think or know can be found in this group, with any dissenting voice being shouted down or ignored without question, is called groupthink.

And the world is rife with it.

How else do you explain how otherwise intelligent and responsible people could believe such things as:

1. Jefferson Davis, president of the U.S Confederacy: "We recognize the Negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him -- our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude . . . You cannot transform the Negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be."

2. Winston Churchill to the Palestine Royal Commission, 1937.: "I do not admit...that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia...by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race...has come in and taken its place."

3. U.S. President (and Ph.D.) Woodrow Wilson, Alexander Graham Bell, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Millikan: All of these believed ardently in eugenics, a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. Hitler believed it as well.

4. British Prime Minister Asquith on the extension of the voting franchise to women: "The natural distinction of sex, which admittedly differentiates the functions of men and women in many departments of human activity, ought to continue to be recognised in the sphere of Parliamentary representation…The question: ‘Why should you deny to a woman of genius the vote, which you would give to her gardener’ (is answered in this way). You are dealing, not with individuals, but with the masses, in my judgement the gain which might result through the admission of gifted and well-qualified women would be more than neutralised by the injurious consequences which would follow to the status and influence of women as a whole."

Such opinions as these aren't held by such public figures without widespread support. Whether because of ignorance (willful or otherwise), arrogance, wrong teaching, group pressure, even good intentions, racist and sexist comments such as those above shaped public policy for decades, if not centuries.

It is only in my lifetime that views of the inherent inferiority of women, blacks, 1st Nations people and the many whom the eugenics movement dismissed as substandard have been more or less rejected by society.

On the life issues front we see this same phenomenon of groupthink distorting perspective. Pro-choice advocates, who are committed to the rights of women but also believe that women's rights trump unborn babies' rights, have concluded that pro-life advocates take a patriarchal view that women lack rights and should still be exploited and coerced.

See, for instance a column written by Jonathan Kay in the Jan. 28/08 edition of the National Post, quoting women at a celebration of the Morgentaler decision held at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Note the closed-mindedness of some of the comments, and the assumptions underlying them:

1. Osgoode Hall Law School professor Shelley Gavigan, the most militant and stereotypically feminist of the conference panelists, declared categorically that “The unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice — and that voice is hers.” The fact that some of her students didn’t see things her way only meant that “I have some work to do on the pedagogical front.”

2. CBC.ca writer Heather Mallick likewise expressed approval of student associations that cut off funding to pro-life groups — because “the rights of Canadian women “are not up for debate.” She also theorized that pro-life stirrings in the mainstream media were mostly the result of over-the-hill male editors seeking to control through repression the lithesome bodies that, in their decrepitude, they could no longer enjoy in the bedroom.

3. Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett put up a slide entitled “Role of an elected official,” which declared that politicians have “no right” to oppose abortion — because “That is the responsibility of women.”

4. Kay noted that the issue of whether there is a point beyond which an abortion should be inappropriate (e.g., 24 weeks such as is the case in Britain) was barely mentioned. One brief exchanged centred around whether a late-term foetus would feel pain: "A male student rose during the Q&A to broach the issue indirectly with legendary Canadian abortion doctor Garson Romalis. The student asked whether late-term unborn children should be supplied pain-killers as part of the abortion procedure. Romalis (who, by way of background, has survived two murder attempts by pro-life fanatics) dismissed any evidence that aborted fetuses feel pain." (See N.B. below)

Astonishing, really. If any of my students feel differently than I do it's because I haven't taught them right yet. Differences of opinion among students should be made illegal on topics that are important to me and my colleagues. Men are not fit to have an opinion because they are too old or simply because they are male and could never understand. Finally, don't confuse me with evidence; my mind is made up.

Classic groupthink. Jefferson Davis, Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger and Prime Minister Asquith would be proud.

Regrettably, stereotypical approaches to thinking are not missing from the pro-life side either. No matter how well intentioned, or ardently believed, groupthink is groupthink.

Prime Minister Harper is probably the first government leader in a long time who could help out this situation. He has publicly stated that he does not easily fit into either the pro-life or pro-choice camp. Curiously both Paul Martin and Jean Chretien claimed to be personally pro-life but publicly pro-choice because of separation of church and state.

Martin, for instance, said “I am a practicing Catholic and I have responsibilities as a legislator and those responsibilities must take in a wider perspective.”

Chretien, also a Catholic, was questioned about his views at a Catholic school at the beginning of the 2000 federal election campaign: A student asked him for his views on abortion, and he startled his audience by saying, "For me, I am a Roman Catholic. I am not at the age any more to have my wife have an abortion."

His wife was sitting a few feet away and the audience gasped. Chretien continued, "But the reality is that it is the choice not of the husband to decide in my judgment, it is the judgment of the woman according to the values that this person have" (Globe & Mail, Oct. 31,2000).

Harper, not having painted himself into any corners, could promote an environment of actual dialogue on life issues via government-sponsored conferences. He's commissioned enough other studies on controversial topics. But he doesn't seem to see the need. Pity. We could sure use less groupthink around these issues.

N.B. Within a couple of hours of publishing this post, I found the following article in today's on-line version of Britain's Telegraph. The article is entitled "Babies feel pain before 24 week abortion limit."

Babies in the womb can feel pain from an early stage of development, according to research by the world's leading expert on foetal pain. Prof Sunny Anand of the University of Arkansas will present his report into foetal pain to MPs discussing changes to abortion law on Monday night. His research concludes that the part of a baby's brain that can feel pain develops before the legal abortion limit of 24 weeks.

Do you think that we dare tell Dr. Romalis?